© -
Steven A. Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
I wanted to do
something to celebrate the onset of Spring, so when a knowledgeable Jazz fan
and friend sent me this piece by the Canadian bassist Steve Wallace, I thought
it would make a perfect blog feature to herald the arrival of the season of
renewal.
The late Jazz
author and critic Martin Williams authored a book entitled Where’s the Melody? for those interested in gaining a better understanding
of how Jazz works. For similar reasons, the subtitle of this feature is a
take-off on Martin’s title.
At the end of the
biographical information about Steve, you’ll find a video tribute to Spring
featuring pianist Bill Evans performing Spring
is Here with Scott LaFaro on bass and Paul Motian on drums.
© -
Steve Wallace, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“I heard a
cardinal in high-fidelity just as I left my house the other morning – ‘bwordy,
bwordy, bwordy’ echoing down the street. The trees being still bare, it was
easy to spot him by following the song - he was up in the top of a maple about
forty yards away. He shifted briefly from one branch to another and the light
caught him at just the right angle, a brilliant rush of crimson, even at that
distance. A morning thrill, a rarity these days, trust me. I stood listening
and admiring him for a few seconds and then noticed some rustling in the big
tree just overhead. Two robins were flitting about, not singing much. Just as I
spotted them they flew off and again the sunlight hit them and I was treated to
a flash of their rusty-orange breasts. A sure sign, I thought with a smile -
spring is here.
There's a song for every occasion and this took me straight to Rodgers and
Hart's great Spring Is Here - its melody
began running through my head as I walked to the subway. It struck me that this
song is a kind of analogy for my aging as a musician (and hopefully my growth
as one) - when I was younger, I didn't have much use for it, but it's become a favorite
tune in recent years. I think the difference is that I appreciate melody a lot
more than I used to, understand it better.
Bassists like myself are often slow in developing a melodic sense, because the
instrument doesn't often get to play melodies - being low-pitched, it's usually
much more involved with rhythmic and harmonic duties, providing the floor for
other people to dance on. When you're starting out, there's so much to learn
and so many things to work on that it's tempting, maybe even necessary, to take
some short cuts, leave some stuff out. I largely left out melody because it
didn't seem all that relevant while I was busy learning the bass, the fingering
positions, scales, developing intonation, a tone and endurance. Not to mention
learning how to play walking bass lines, to handle different rhythmic feels at
various tempos, developing a repertoire by learning and memorizing the chord
changes of songs. Then there was the mental aspect of music - the theory, ear
training, harmony, modes and chord scales and on and on. Who the hell had time
for melody? I was too busy being a grunt in the engine rooms of bands, a
sweat-hog grinding out the quarter-notes, trying to keep the tempos up and make
things swing. It's a dirty job, but somebody has to do it.
Melody was for singers or the lead instruments to take care of and besides, in
jazz, the melody is only played in the first and last choruses - in between
came the important part, or so I thought - the improvisation, or
"blowing" as we call it. I was so caught up in sound, quarter-note
groove and chord changes that I almost developed a chauvinism about melody - it
was for sissies, not hard swingers, and the further I stayed away from it, the
more "bass-like" and functional my playing would be. I made some
progress on the bass with this approach, but it never occurred to me back then
that knowing and being able to play the melody of a song would make me a better
improviser, or lead to lots of other useful information and technique. I also
didn't realize that learning the melody would let me remember a tune much
better than memorizing its changes. When I had difficulties playing a decent
solo back then I rationalized it in all kinds of ways. I was tired from laying
down all those quarter-notes and by the time a bass solo came around I didn't
have much left - besides, bass solos are over-rated, right? If you're going to
play one though, it might as well be musical and sound good, and this is where
my melodic deficiencies began to show, to cost me. My ears had spent too long
rumbling around in the basements of tunes, moving from root to root. My touch
was powerful but not very supple or subtle.
My taste in songs back then was governed by this non-melodic outlook too. I
tended to like tunes because of their interesting or logical chord changes, or
if they had a strong blues element like say, Come Rain or Come Shine, or if their melodies tended to swing
themselves, like As Long As I Live or
I've Got the World On A String. And
of course, I loved pieces by jazz composers like Ellington, Monk, Horace
Silver, John Lewis and many others because they were made for blowing and
swinging. Spring Is Here was an
example of the kind of song I didn't like back then. First of all it was
originally a ballad, meant to be played slowly (yawn) and I didn't care much
for ballads unless they had interesting chords and lots of them, like Body and Soul or 'Round Midnight. Like a lot of young guys, I wanted everything to
be fast, hard, dense and raging, to have a lot of energy, just as I did.
Spring seemed limp and vanilla to me.
The melody was kind of static both in its rhythm and notes - the first part of
each half was mainly dotted half-notes and whole-notes and the second sections
were just quarter notes ascending diatonically from the third up an octave to a
whole-note outside the key - I completely missed the drama and crescendo of
this. The song had awkward chord changes too - its melody was so Plain-Jane
that I couldn't hear any interesting ways to harmonize it. The opening phrase
starts on the major seventh, goes up briefly to the tonic and resolves back
down to the sixth, and this repeats. Big deal, I thought, what are you supposed
to do with that? Where's the swing, the action here? I was too green to realize
the diminished harmony implications of this type of melody and I seemed to have
missed the class where they taught the diminished scale, one of the only really
useful ones. I just couldn't get anything out of the tune at all, grimaced
whenever it was called.
My opinion of Spring began to change
after I heard Bill Evans play it on his great Portrait In Jazz record -
hearing a genius play a song will tend to sell you on it. Bill's version is in
A-flat, slow and lyrical as you'd expect but it's also really intense, there's
lots of heat there. As always, he gets the piano to really sing the melody and
found great chords for the song. He uses an E7 in the first bar, so the melody
note G is the sharp nine of that chord, then resolves to an A-flat chord with
an F on top and E-flat in the bass. This melody phrase repeats, but he keeps
the chords moving downward with a Dmin7-flat5 and a D-flat7, avoiding monotony.
When I first heard this, I thought my head was going to explode, it was just so
brilliant. He also harmonizes every one of the ascending quarter-notes
beautifully, breaking up the seeming static quality of the tune. Evans brings a
lot of motion to the song even at this tempo and on a basic level that's what
music is - tones moving in rhythm. I began to realize here that chord changes are
defined and dictated by the melody note on top, that seemingly plain melody
notes can lead to interesting chord possibilities and that none of this happens
unless you pay attention to a song's melody. Really, the melody tells you what
the chords mean, otherwise they're just clumps of notes.
Later, I heard recordings of Spring
by singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Sarah Vaughan and came to like it more from
also hearing the words. They're by Lorenz Hart, who I think is in a class of
his own as a lyricist. He was an unhappy, nasty, screwed-up guy but very gifted
with rhyme, rhythm and wit, a poet really. I also played the song with a singer
named Anne-Marie Moss, who was truly an awful bitch but could really sing slow
ballads and this helped me appreciate the delicate, special mood of this song.
The clincher for me though was recording it with singer John Alcorn on an album
of all Rodgers and Hart songs about ten years ago. John sang it in the same key
as Evans and used his chords, but did the song as a slow bossa nova, which
really suits it. This type of tempo played with lots of space can be
mesmerizing and when we finished the take I was soaked with sweat, barely aware
of time or place. I thought to myself, ‘Jesus, Wallace, how could you have been
such a dope? What a great song this is.’ Really, it's a singer's song, but many
of the great ones are. The trick when playing it instrumentally is to maintain
that vocal quality, as Evans did. Here are the words:
Spring is here.
Why doesn't my heart go dancing?
Spring is here.
Why isn't the waltz more entrancing?
No desire, no ambition leads me.
Maybe it's because nobody needs me.
Spring is here.
Why doesn't the breeze delight me?
Stars appear.
Why doesn't the night invite me?
Maybe it's because nobody loves me.
Spring is here, I hear.
Hart wrote some lyrics better than this, but not many, and not by much -
they're just deadly and fit the melody beautifully. Beyond knowing the melody,
Lester Young always insisted musicians should know the lyrics of the songs they
play, even though they wouldn't be sung. He said knowing the words leads you to
play the song at the right tempo, phrase it properly and breathe in the right
places. Some find this ethereal but I think he's dead right - too often I've
heard musicians wreck songs by playing them at the wrong tempo (usually too
fast) and it's because they don't consider the words. Above all, knowing the
words tells you what the song means, what it's about, which affects your
approach to it, or should. At its best, playing a song is like telling a story,
and it at least helps to know what the story is before you start talking or
blowing your horn.
After playing the bass for several years I finally got more in touch with
melody after seeking the advice of a great local musician, Don Thompson. Don
does many things really well, I just hate him - plays great piano, vibes, bass,
composes and arranges, you name it. In the late '70s he was playing a lot of
bass and I heard him often. His left hand amazed me - his solos were really melodic
and eloquent, he seemed to range all over the bass effortlessly with great
articulation and pitch, it was scary. I finally worked up the nerve to ask him
how he'd developed his left hand and he answered in his typically deadpan,
slightly bland manner – ‘I practiced the melodies of songs in all twelve keys,
really slowly, making sure I got the notes right.’
This gob smacked me, I was stunned - melodies in all twelve keys?!? The advice
had come from God himself though, so I started working on it, with simple tunes
like Georgia and Bye Bye Blackbird at first. It was slow going, hard work and
mentally tiring, but it beat the hell out of scales and Simandl exercises and
gradually I found that practicing this way improved all facets of my playing. I
became freer ranging around the bass without thinking about the finger
positions, letting my ear guide me, and different keys became less foreign and
scary. My articulation and pitch improved, my ears opened up and I started to
hear more, get more flow and ideas in soloing. Above all, I was learning about
phrasing melodies, how they have contours and shapes. It began to occur to me
that a song's melody is like its DNA, contains a code of interval patterns and
relationships that define it and these can be used in improvising, in hearing
counter-melodies, guide tones and even in finding better bass notes in
accompaniment. I was beginning to almost feel like a housebroken musician, I
only went all over the carpet occasionally now. Despite this foray into the
lofty, romantic, ozone layer of melody though, girls continued to give me a
pretty wide berth. I guess the glamour of the jazz life was just too much for
them - yeah, that must have been it.
Ironically, areas like rhythm and harmony that seemed to have nothing to do
with melody also improved. My walking bass lines and time feel sounded better
because the articulation, pitch and note choices were better and my
understanding of harmony became sharper because I was more aware and heard
better. I started to relax a little when playing, rather than trying to hammer
everybody over the head with fat quarter notes all the time. Much as people
mistakenly think of the mind and body as being separate, I'd thought of melody
as being distinct from rhythm and harmony, but really they're all intimately
connected and melody leads straight to the other two and vice versa. Don
Thompson's bass playing and mine are about as dissimilar as you could imagine,
so it's also ironic that the best piece of musical advice I've ever received should
have come from him, and I can't thank him enough.
Drums can't really play notes, but melody has a rhythmic component and good
jazz drumming is informed by melody too, believe it or not. The really good
drummers I've played a lot with - Terry Clarke, John Sumner, Barry Elmes, Ted
Warren - all have a strong sense of melody and form, listen well and know how
the tunes go, adjusting their phrasing, sounds and textures according to the
melody, its shapes and dynamics. Jerry Fuller played pretty good bass and was
an excellent scat singer. He often saved my butt if I wasn't sure of a tune -
he'd hum the right bass notes to me while playing the drums. He was a great
musician and a prince - God, how I miss him. Jake Hanna used to travel with a
miniature xylophone and the melodies to lots of songs written out - he'd
practice playing them every day. This kept his ears sharp, he called it
"taking his melody vitamins." He used to say the melody chorus is
also a jazz chorus and unless someone plays a stupendous solo, it's often the
best chorus. Andrew Miller is a friend of my son Lee, a good young drummer and
we played some together as a trio before he moved back to B.C. He kept a small
pad and pencil and after certain tunes he'd lean over and ask me the name of
the song, then he'd write it down. I asked him about this and he said if he
didn't know a tune, he wanted the title so he could find a recording of it and
listen - he said he played the tune better if he knew how it went. That's it in
a nutshell - even if you don't play the melody, you'll play better if you know
it. From the mouths of babes.
I'll always be attracted to the more extroverted and greasy aspects of jazz,
that's just hard-wired into me. But now. playing lyrical tunes with beautiful
melodies is also right up there among my favorite things to do. One of the
nicest compliments I've ever received was from saxophonist Mike Murley a few
years ago after he'd heard me play a set or two with somebody at the Montreal
Bistro. ‘Wanker’ he said, ‘you really know how to play songs.’ It made me proud
to hear this, because playing songs is important to me, I think of them as the
basic unit of musical civilization, the same way having people over for dinner
is the basic unit of social civilization. I try to impress this on younger
music students whenever I'm talking with them - by all means, work on all the
technical and theoretical stuff they're shoving at you in school, but don't
lose sight of the big picture, keep your eye on the prize. The prize is playing
songs - at the end of the day all your skills and everything you've learned
should boil down to being able to stand up in front of people, play a song and
make it your own, take it somewhere, have it sing, move people, excite them,
hold their attention. If you can't do that, then what is the point of playing
music at all?
When I go out to play or hear jazz, I want to hear musicians listening to one
another, playing together. I'm not interested in any particular style, but I
want to hear some lyricism, some space, some intensity, some feeling of the
blues and swing. By these last two, I don't mean I literally want the music to
sound like Big Joe Turner or Benny Goodman, although that wouldn't be the worst
thing. I mean I want the music to have some dirt and cry in it, to show its ass
a little bit, have a dancing quality and get off the ground. There should be
lots of sweat and laughter - music is hard work and serious business, but it
has to be fun too - after all, you don't work music, you play music. Above all,
I want to hear some songs, or at least some music that has the quality of song
in it. I don't want to hear what musicians know, I want to hear them translate
what they know into what they feel - feeling is all that music is, really. You
can't see it or touch it, you can only hear it and feel it.
I also don't want to hear mere cleverness or virtuosity, music that's all just
about harmony or rhythmic algebra. Guys trying to outplay each other, not
listening or leaving any room, running a bunch of notes together in an endless
dirge of tuneless, limp drivel. Take this show-off, "jazz from the neck
up" back to whatever school you learned it in, boys. This may sound old
and cranky, and maybe it is - I'm gettin' there. Most of what I'm trying to say
is nicely illustrated in a story about the great, unique pianist Jimmy Rowles,
who knew as much about songs and harmony as anybody who ever lived. He was
playing a piano-bass duet gig for a while and one night his regular bassist
sent in a sub, who decided to try and impress the master with his knowledge of
harmony by hitting him with a whole slew of super-hip bass notes and chord
substitutions, playing everything but the kitchen sink. After a couple of tunes
worth of this, and working on his second double vodka, Rowles turned to this
Einstein of the bass with a glare and rasped "I'm aware of the
possibilities … let’s just play the
f---ing song the way it goes and make some music, OK?"
Betty Carter pushed the boundaries of jazz singing by trying to make the voice
a fully-fledged improvising instrument like the others. This led her to more
and more abstraction, making sounds with her voice that weren't conventional
for singers, using a huge range, and often eschewing the melody. It was daring
and difficult, a challenge for her, her musicians and audience. Some liked her
singing, others shrugged and asked "Aren't singers supposed to sing the
melody?" She was feisty, to put it mildly, and answered this by naming one
of her records "It's Not About the Melody." While I have a lot of
admiration for her and any other artist who hoes a hard, lonely road by going
their own way, I have to respectfully disagree - it's always about the melody,
that's where the music lives. Hear it and it will set you free, like a bird.”
© -
Canadianjazzarchive.org, copyright protected; all rights reserved.
“STEVE WALLACE (bassist) was born on August 16, 1956 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, and is today regarded by many as the most
powerful bass player that Canada has produced. He is almost certainly the
most experienced, having begun working with visiting jazz greats in Toronto
clubs such as Bourbon Street, Lytes, and George’s Spaghetti House while he was
still in his twenties, backing some of the music’s most famous names including
Clark Terry, Harry ‘Sweets’ Edison, Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis, George Coleman, Zoot
Sims, and Pepper Adams.
He has also
recorded and toured with some of the biggest names in Canadian jazz including
Fraser MacPherson, Rob McConnell, Oscar Peterson, and Oliver Jones. In 1982
Steve became associated with the Concord Jazz label, touring the Soviet Union, Europe and Japan, and recording albums as a sideman with
Rosemary Clooney, Ed Bickert, Mel Torme, and others.
He became bassist
with Rob McConnell’s ‘The Boss Brass’ in 1983 and remained with the band for
ten years. In 1985, he replaced ailing bassist George Duvivier to tour Europe, Japan, and Australia with Woody Herman's All Stars, a group
that included Al Cohn, Buddy Tate, Urbie Green, John Bunch, and Jake Hanna. In
more recent years Wallace again toured Europe frequently as a member of the Oscar
Peterson Trio.
He has been
bassist with the Barry Elmes Quintet since its formation in 1991, and a
founding member of D.E.W. East (Dean, Elmes, Wallace), for whom Wallace also
contributes his own new compositions. He is also a member of Rob McConnell's
Tentet, the Mike Murley Trio, the David Braid Sextet, and the Sam Noto Quintet.
Steve Wallace is
likely the most-heard musician in the three-decade-plus history of the “Sound
of Toronto Jazz” Concert Series at the Ontario Science Centre, having played
bass on no fewer than 24 individual concerts.”
