Valery Ponomarev - “On the Flip Side of Sound” – An Autobiography

“If I had collected only one cent for each time I had to answer the questions: ‘How did you join Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers?,’ ‘How did you escape from Russia?,’ and ‘How did you learn to play Jazz like that in Moscow?,’ I would be a billionaire by now. So I have decided to answer these questions once and for all [with this autobiography]

- Valery Ponomarev

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

If you’ve read any of Martin Cruz Smith’s wonderful stories featuring Investigator Arkady Renko of the Moscow Police Force [Gorky Park is probably the most famous of these], then you already know that Moscow can be a very strange place.

The city seems to be a microcosmic reflection of Russia itself, a country once described by Winston Churchill, the distinguished British statesman -from an era when there still were “distinguished statesmen” – as “a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma.”

Jazz trumpeter Valery Ponomarev describes Russia this way:

“One-sixth of all of the earth's land mass, Mother Russia - loved, hated, richest, poorest, the most ingenious, stupidest, generous, miserly, master, slave, forgiving, vindictive, the strongest, the weakest, God-fearing, atheistic, beautiful, ugly, loving parent, Cinderella's stepmother, drunk, sober, insane, sensible, sick, healthy, heroic, cowardly, treacherous, loyal, violent, peaceful, cruel, kind, vulnerable, secure, saint, sinner, criminal, lawful, transparent, mysterious, naive, sophisticated, backwards, in the space age, polluted, pure, vile, honorable, ruined, forever young and beautiful, its turbulent history, all 12 time zones of it, no longer yours, left behind.”

The quotation is taken from p. 52 of Valery’s book entitled On The Flip Side of Sound - one of the most unique Jazz autobiographies ever written.

Journey-of-a-soul books have always fascinated me for as Aristotle once said: “We are all different with regard to those things we have in common.”

So while we all have Life in common, we all live it differently.

And no Jazz musician that I’m familiar with has ever lived anything resembling the life of Valery Ponomarev.

Its easy to summarize the book as it deals with Valery adventures in attempting to leave the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics, come to “The Jazz Headquarters of the World” [AKA – New York City] and become a member of the legendary drummer Art Blakey’s “Jazz Messengers.’”

In an earlier profile on Valery entitled Valery Ponomarev’s Muscle Jazz which you can locate in the JazzProfiles archives by going here, we shared many of the details of how Valery was inspired to become a Jazz trumpet player by Clifford Brown recordings and Willis Conover’s Voice of America Jazz radio programs.

Our essay on Valery also contains descriptions of the recordings that he has made under his own name for Dr. Mark Feldman’s Reservoir Records dating back to 1985.

But what is especially pleasing about On The Flip Side of Sound is learning Valery’s story by reading it in his own words.

“From the very beginning Art treated us sidemen like members of his own family, like we were his children. So many times he would stick up for us, go far out of his way to help us or protect our interests, sacrifice his own time or rest, I knew there was more to it than just joining a band and being able to play the music. Many of the worlds greatest musicians at different times had worked in the band; that alone had a profound significance,

"You joined a family," kept ringing in my ears. That was it. Now, for the first time on foreign soil I realized I was not alone, I had a family. And what a family at that: Horace Silver, Clifford Brown, Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, etc were all my uncles and brothers, and, of course, with Art the father of us all.

He gave musical life to so many artists, young and unknown at first! Who else but a father can do that? [p. 121]

Or these words from Valery describing a “chance” encounter with a “… beautiful lady” after concluding a set with Art’s group at The Parisian Room in Los Angeles:

"I didn't quite get your name. What is it exactly?" I introduced myself and she made me repeat it several times, so she could learn to pronounce it correctly

"May I have your name"? I tried to sound as elegant as the lady, being prepared to repeat her name several times too, if necessary, so I could pronounce it properly,

"LaRue Brown "

"Excuse me "

"You heard me right"

"You're Clifford Browns wife?"

"Yes"

I knew their story very well. My hero's untimely death made me contemplate time and again: "Why is it that such geniuses die very often young?"

Pushkin, Lermontov, Mozart, Gagarin you name it, Clifford Brown, Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, Lee Morgan, What is it? Maybe God calls them back because they are too good for this world.

What if they themselves, perfect minds, don't want to adapt to the imperfect world of ours and find a way out somehow leaving us here on our own devices? Who knows?

I told LaRue how her husband’s music inspired me to become a jazz musician, how I studied and practiced, how I escaped.” [pp. 195-196]

The following excerpt on the late Willis Conover is heartbreaking. Valery knew first-hand the value of a man who did more than anyone to spread the music of Jazz throughout the world in the 2^nd half of the 20^th century:

"[Maria Ciliberti, a long-time associate of Willis Conover explains]

Oh, Valery, if you only knew how hard it was for Willis all this years. They were attacking him from all sides: some using influences, some threatening to close the program. When I came back from the Soviet Union in the early 1960s and told people how popular Willis's JAZZ HOUR was over there, I found out from Willis that at that time, the bigwigs were talking about taking his program off the air with the excuse that it wasn't the VGA's job to "entertain" the listeners. Over the years, they would say to him: don't play this, don't play that, why are you playing this, play this one or that one. He never wavered. Willis used to call them the "bureaucraps". One reason these government bureaucraps opposed him is that no one could take credit for creating him or the program. Thankfully, Willis always had the support of the U.S. Information Agency directors all through the years as well as help on Capitol Hill. That's what kept the program alive, that as well as the fact that foreign service officers knew of the amazing popularity of Willis's programs overseas. And he was on contract and not a staff employee. Only a couple of years before he died they left him alone." I was in shock. 'Don't tell me who should play in my band' kept pulsating in my head.

Can you believe this - if not for Willis Conover all these boring protégés would have flooded the airwaves and I would've never heard Clifford Brown, Art Blakey, I would've never become a Jazz musician. Half the world wouldn't have a clue as per what real jazz was, would've been saying 'I don't like Jazz.' I am not the only one to tell you how much people around the world loved America and its spirit in those years. And that's largely because of Jazz…. [p 295].

The book is available from the Author House Press which you can locate by going here.

Some other comments about the book and its author are as follows:

"Valery Ponomarev’s story is electrifying and inspiring. Most of all, its living proof that dedication to truth and beauty can and must triumph over artificially imposed impediments ,"

- Bob Bernotas   (Jazz journalist, author, and radio host)

"I thought I knew this man — a great friend and colleague with whom I've often toured over the past 15 or so years — pretty well, but after reading this memoir, my eyes were really opened! Fascinating! Valery Ponomarev’s skill with storytelling nearly matches his prowess with the trumpet, and the content of his remarkable stories — and of course his outstanding playing — is rich, intelligent, humorous, and naturally, always swinging. Enjoy this book, then go listen to his music!"-

- Don Braden

Jazz Musician/Composer/Educator/Music Director, Wachovia Jazz

For Teens, the Litchfield Jazz Camp Visiting Professor, Prins Glaus Conservatoire

“… I learned of the people's of the USSR passionate love of jazz brought to them by the Voice of Americas jazz radio programs hosted by the inimitable Willis Conover, What would their impressions be, thought I? My answer came in Valery Ponomarevs wonderful book "On the Flip Side of Sound", Written with the same zest and inventiveness that Valery brings to his trumpet solos, this is an amazing saga of a musician's journey, marvelous adventures and unbelievable dream. As Valery s feet are firmly planted in both America and Russia, he brings the fabric and intricacies of both societies into sharp focus”

 - Maria Ciliberti

Retired VOA Russian-language broadcaster

Special Assistant, VOA USSR Division

Co-host of VOA jazz program "Conversations with Conover"

Coordinator, Worldwide VOA Listeners' Clubs

“’Paramon’ as his Russian peers affectionately call him belongs to a select group of musicians who also possess the ability to communicate through the written word. In this book he tells us, with humor and wisdom, about his interesting life.”

- Paquito D’Rivera

"Valery Ponomarev, in addition to being a great trumpeter, is a colorful storyteller with an impressive memory and a memorable and unique life story* From his days growing up in the Soviet Union through his tours as a member of Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers up to the current day, Ponomarev has experienced quite a bit. His frank memoirs balance wit with drama and contain many fresh tales that add to the history of jazz. Get this book!”

 - Scott Yanow (Author of ten jazz books including Trumpet Kings, Jazz On Film, The Jazz Singers and Jazz On Record 1917-76)

The crackerjack graphics team at CerraJazz LTD has developed the following videos to help provide a basis for an appreciating Valery’s sparkling, Jazz trumpet playing.  If you like your Jazz full of “juice and flavor,” then Paramon’s music will certainly peak your appetite.

Ray Brown 1926-2002: A Tribute

In addition to a reposting of an earlier profile Bam, Bam, Bam!!! - The Ray Brown Trios which you can locate by scrolling down the left-hand side of the site, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles is working on a new feature about Ray that should post in about two weeks. In the meantime, please enjoy this video tribute to one of the great bassists in the history of Jazz. The audio track is a marvelously crafted arrangement of Irving Berlin's chestnut Remember on which Ray is joined by Benny Green on piano and Jeff Hamilton on drums.

There was a time when no self-respecting Jazz trio would be caught dead without an arrangement for every tune they played.

Ray Brown comes from this tradition and he taught it to the young guys - Benny and Jeff.

It takes the group a full two minutes to play the song's arrangement before Benny begins his solo at 2:00 minutes. He states the melody on piano at 0:33, Ray plays the bridge or refrain from 1:00 - 1:14 minutes before Benny restates the melody from 1:15 - 1:25 minutes.

From 1:26 - 2:00 minutes there is an arranged "call and response" sequence between piano and bass and then between piano and drums until Benny begins his solo. This part of the arrangement is repeated following the solos as a vehicle for closing the tune.

Listen to how Benny really "lights up" when Jeff switches to sticks and moves off the samba beat to straight 4/4 time at 2:54 minutes.

Jeff returns to the samba beat, which you can hear in a very pronounced manner on the bass drum, when he begins his solo at 3:48 minutes.

During his solo, Jeff moves from sticks to brushes to a small shaker beginning at 4:42 minutes.

You can make one of these if you have an old 35mm film canister. Just fill it almost to the top with pop corn kernels, put the lid back on very securely, grip it between your thumb and first, two fingers, and with your hand held upright and arm bent at the elbow, shake the canister to the rhythm of the music.

Don't forget to smile! :)

Erroll Garner: The Nonpareil

“Erroll Garner was one of a kind. He was as outré as the great beboppers, yet bop was alien to him, even though he recorded with Char­lie Parker. He swung mightily, yet he stood outside the swing tradition; he played orchestrally, and his style was swooningly romantic, yet he could be as merciless on a tune as Fats Waller. He never read music, but he could play a piece in any key, and delighted in deceiving his rhythm sections from night to night. His tumbling, percussive, humorous style was entirely his own.”

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

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

These days, it sometimes seems to me that “unique,” “peerless,” “one-and-only” and other, similar words and phrases are indiscriminately bandied about.

But they are appropriate in their use and meaning when applied to the music of Erroll Garner.

He was sui generis.

One of my earliest recollections of Jazz piano being played in an orchestral and percussive manner was on the 10” Columbia House Party EP entitled Here’s Here, He’s Gone, He’s Garner!  It contains an 8+ minute version of Erroll playing The Man I Love that moves from a stately Brahmsian introduction, to a majestically slow representation of the melody before devolving into chorus after chorus of up-tempo, pulsating and original improvisations whose conclusion always leaves me exhausted from the excitement they generate in my emotions.

Erroll plays his usual four-beats-to-the-bar left hand self-accompaniment, but his right hand is all over the middle and upper register of the piano with block chord phrases, rhythmic riffs interchanged with drum fills and single lines that weave a powerful elucidation of bop phrases.

Pianist Dick Katz, in his splendidly instructive essay entitled “Pianists of the 1940s and 1950s” that appears in editor Bill Kirchner’s The Oxford Companion to Jazz [New York: Oxford University Press, 2000], provides this description of Erroll Garner:

“Unique is an inadequate word to describe Erroll Garner. He was a musical phenomenon unlike any other. One of the most appealing performers in Jazz history, he influenced almost every pianist who played in his era, and even beyond. Self-taught, he could not read music, yet he did things that trained pianists could not play or even imagine. Garner was a one-man swing band, and indeed often acknowledged that his main inspiration was the big bands of the thirties – Duke, Basie, Lunceford, et al. He developed a self-sufficient, extremely full style that was characterized by a rock-steady left-hand that also sounded like a strumming rhythm guitar. Juxtaposed against this was a river of chordal or single note ideas, frequently stated in a lagging, behind-the-beat way that generated terrific swing.” [P. 365]”

And in Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters, Len Lyons had this to say about Erroll:

“An idiosyncratic improviser with a fertile imagination, Garner could be an effervescent, whimsical, bombastic, and always emotional—some­times within the same song. He made hundreds of recordings, most of them spontaneously, barely pausing between selections. Garner's style was un­mistakable: lush tremolo chords in the right hand, "strummed" left-hand block chords that kept precise time, elaborately embellished melodies, and a beat so polyrhythmic that the music seemed to be played in two distinct time signatures.

Influenced by Earl "Fatha" Hines, Teddy Wilson, the beat of the big bands, and later by the harmonies and phrasing of bebop, Garner carved a niche for himself that was too unique and specialized to leave room for followers. At the piano bench, he perched his diminutive frame on a telephone book to improve his reach, and he sang to himself in audible grunts and growls as he played. His impish humor came through in his music and his demeanor. …

Johnny Burke added the lyrics to Erroll’s Misty in 1959 and Johnny Mathis recording of it that year really served to enhance Garner’s popularity with both Jazz fans and the general public. Erroll wrote the tune while on a flight from San Francisco to Denver when a rainbow that he watched through a misted window of the plane inspired the song and its title.” [pp. 213-214].

In 1956, Columbia released Concert By The Sea on which Erroll is accompanied b bassist Eddie Calhoun and drummer Denzil Best.  It became one of the best selling Jazz albums of all time and has remained in print ever since.

A “behind-the-scenes” look at how this recording came about in provided in the following excerpt by Will Friedwald.

© -Will Friedwald, copyright protected; all rights reserved. Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Erroll Garner's Serendipitous Hit

The Wall Street Journal, SEPTEMBER 17, 2009

By WILL FRIEDWALD

The pianist Erroll Garner was one of the great improvisers of all time -- and not exclusively in his music. As writer John Murphy notes, a New York Times profile of Garner in 1959 by John S. Wilson observed that the musician refused to make any kind of plan until the very last minute; he cooked elaborate dishes without the aid of a recipe book by simply throwing different ingredients together and tasting; he taught himself to play golf without instruction. He also played thousands of songs entirely by ear, without ever bothering to learn to read music, and composed many original tunes that way, including the standard "Misty." Therefore it shouldn't be surprising that Garner (1921-1977) made his best album -- the legendary "Concert by the Sea" -- practically by accident.

On Sept. 19, 1955, Garner (who is also represented on a wonderful new DVD of two concerts from Europe eight years later, "Live in '63 and '64," as part of the Jazz Icons series produced by Reelin' in the Years and available at www.reelinintheyears.com) performed at Fort Ord, an army base near Carmel, Calif., at the behest of disc jockey and impresario Jimmy Lyons. Martha Glaser, who served as Garner's personal manager for nearly his entire career, happened to be backstage when she noticed a tape recorder running. As she recalled for the Journal last week, it turned out that the show was being taped -- without Garner's knowledge -- by a jazz fan and scholar named Will Thornbury, strictly for the enjoyment of himself and his fellow servicemen. Ms. Glaser told him, "I'll give you copies of every record Erroll ever made, but I can't let you keep that tape." She took it back to New York (carrying it on her lap), where she assembled it into album form, titled it "Concert by the Sea," and then played it for George Avakian, who ran the jazz department at Columbia Records. Garner had actually left Columbia three years earlier, but, as Mr. Avakian recently told the Journal: "I totally flipped over it! I knew that we had to put it out right away."

When Columbia released "Concert by the Sea" a few months later, this early live 12-inch LP was a runaway sensation. It became the No. 1 record of Garner's 30-year career and one of the most popular jazz albums of all time. It's not hard to hear why: From the first notes onward, Garner plays like a man inspired -- on fire, even. He always played with a combination of wit, imagination, amazing technical skill and sheer joy far beyond nearly all of his fellow pianists, but on this particular night he reached a level exceeding his usual Olympian standard.

"Concert" begins with one of Garner's characteristic left-field introductions -- even his bassist and drummer, in this case Eddie Calhoun and Denzil Best, rarely had an idea where he was going to go. This intro is particularly dark, heavy and serious -- so much the better to heighten the impact of the "punchline," when Garner tears into "I'll Remember April." Originally written as a romantic love song, Garner swings it so relentlessly fast that you can practically feel the surf and breeze of the windswept beach image from the album's famous cover.

The sheer exhilaration of Garner's playing never lets up; even when he slows down the tempo on "How Could You Do a Thing Like That to Me" (a tune also known as Duke Ellington's "Sultry Serenade"), the pianist shows that he's just as adroit at playing spaces as he is at playing notes. The bulk of the album showcases his brilliant flair for dressing up classic standards such as "Where or When" (when Garner plays it, he leaves the question mark out -- you know exactly where and precisely when), but "Red Top" illustrates what he can do with a 12-bar blues and "Mambo Carmel" comes out of his fascination with Latin polyrhythms.

"Concert by the Sea" has never been off my iPod. Sadly, it's also one of the few classic jazz albums that has never been properly reissued. If any album's audio could use a little tender loving care, this is it; the original tape was barely a professional recording, and the bass, for instance, is barely audible. Sony issued a compact disc in 1991, but it's just a straight transfer of the 1955 master, and the digital medium makes it sound worse rather than better. …”

We also located this review of Telarc’s issuance of a multi-disc set of Erroll’s music by Mike Hennessey on the Garner Archives:

The Great Erroll Garner Legacy

By Mike Hennessey

Copyright © 1999-2002 Erroll Garner Archives

George Wein regarded him as "a great musical genius".

Hugues Panassié said of him, "He is not only the greatest pianist to emerge in jazz since World War II, but he is also the only one who has created a new style which is in the true jazz tradition, one which constitutes the essence of this music."

Mary Lou Williams revered him as "an asset and inspiration to the jazz world."

Steve Allen said he was "the greatest popular pianist of our century."

And Art Tatum called him, "My little boy."

They were talking about Erroll Louis Garner, the formidably accomplished and incredibly prolific self-taught pianist who first began exploring the piano keyboard at the age of three and went on to become a genuine jazz legend. His professional career spanned almost four decades and, in that time, he recorded for dozens of different labels, sometimes solo, mostly with his own trio. His recorded output occupies 33 pages in Tom Lord's The Jazz Discography. He made altogether more than 200 albums.

Garner was an amazingly energetic and resourceful musician with a phenomenal ear, remarkable memory and an astonishing independence of right and left hands. He was completely ambidextrous and could write and play tennis right or left handed with equal facility. He was also a sensitive, intelligent and rather shy man with a sunny disposition and an impish humour and he never took himself or his art too seriously.

A Telarc six-CD set of recordings made by Erroll Garner between December 1959 and October 1973 -- simply entitled Erroll Garner -- offers an abundant and representative sample of the prodigious and incomparable Garner legacy. The set comprises 12 original albums, now available for the first time in digital CD format -- altogether a selection of 118 numbers, the vast majority of which come from the great American popular song repertoire.”

Bud Shank – Some Remembrances

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

Alto saxophonist Bud Shank passed away in April 2009; the Jazz writer Gene Lees passed away in April 2010.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it might be appropriate for one to share some remembrances about the other in April 2011.

In an earlier 2-part feature on Bud which you can locate in the blog archives by going here and here, I commented on the fact that for a long time, I was one-step-behind Bud in terms of hearing him perform in-person.

When I eventually got around to telling Bud this story – in-person – he laughed hugely, took the book of John Reeves photographs from under my arm and autographed one of his photos to me as a belated – “Hi Steve.”  He handed me the book, clamped his hand down on my shoulder and then once again roared into laughter.

We didn’t think that Gene would mind too much if we shared a little of his magnificent writing about Bud as he was always a fan of the genuine in Jazz.

And make no mistake, when it came to Jazz, Bud Shank was the real deal.

We’ve concluded this piece with two videos that were subsequently developed by the wizardly graphics team at CerraJazz LTD. The first is a tribute to Bud with an audio track that finds him performing with Carmel Jones on trumpet while on the second his unparalleled alto saxophone playing is joined by Gerry Mulligan’s baritone saxophone. 

Since our immortality rests in the minds of others, all hats off to the memories of Bud Shank and Gene Lees.

© -Gene Lees, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Clifford [Bud] Shank, Dayton, Ohio, May 27, 1926

“No one illustrates the way jazz expresses the inner states of its practitioners better than Bud Shank. Bud was part of that lyr­ical approach to the music disparaged by New York critics and some musicians as West Coast jazz. Bud's playing on saxo­phones, chiefly alto, and on flute, had a deferential quality that lacked the testos­terone level certain easterners seemed to think was a defining quality of jazz.

Bud, an alumnus of the Stan Kenton band, was a stalwart of the Los Angeles recording scene. You often heard his lovely sound in movie scores. "I was a stu­dio sausage” as he puts it. He found solace in driving Formula One racing cars and sailing his boats, meanwhile putting his gains into California real estate back when its prices were not yet challenging those of downtown Tokyo.

Then, abruptly, Bud left the studios, and even left California, taking residence in Port Townsend, Washington, where he founded a summertime festival of the arts and a teaching program for young jazz musicians. So handsome in his youth that one might almost have described him as pretty, he grew a gray beard and took on the look of a mountain man. He gave up the flute, arguing that no one can master two instruments, and devoted himself to playing jazz on the alto.

His playing changed radically. I was mystified. Then Bud and I had a long talk and I learned why. Bud was cross-eyed from childhood. I told him I had never noticed. He said, "No, you didn't. I had ways to conceal it." Turning his head away from you. Wearing sunglasses. All sorts of tricks. "And," he said, "I played like that too."

A doctor told him he could fix that eye. He could not restore its sight, of course. (A wayward eye eventually loses its sight; the brain refuses to process the signal from it.) Bud thought it over and submitted to the surgery. The eye is now straight. Bud is no longer ashamed. He holds his head up, looks right at you, and plays that way. His playing has become fiery, proud, defiant.”

- Gene Less and John Reeves, Jazz Lives: 100 Portraits in Jazz [Buffalo, NY: Firefly, 1994, p. 64].

James Price Johnson and William “Chick” Webb

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

From time-to-time, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles likes to give a quick nod to some of those who made the music during its formative stages.

Its our small way of remembering their contributions and it is a always great fun to compare what was happening in Jazz, then and now.

At times, even with the “distant” sound that characterized the audio of many of the earlier recordings, it can be quite startling to hear the improvised ideas and technical mastery of these early Jazz musicians.

Two such musicians that have always impressed us in this manner are pianist James P. Johnson, who died in 1955, and drummer Chick Webb, who died in 1939.

We have brought together video tributes to each of them as developed by the ace graphics team at CerraJazz LTD and coupled them with short portraits by notable Jazz writers.

© -Len Lyons and Don Perlo, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“In the hands of James Price Johnson [1894-1955], ragtime piano developed into "stride," a more boldly imaginative style characterized by a left hand that constantly strides from the lower to the middle register of the keyboard. Johnson played in a looser, more blues-based style than the classically oriented rag-timers. Though he was always drawn to composing orchestral works, he will be remembered most for his solo-piano playing and for his timeless composition "The Charleston" (1923). He was a profound force in the development of jazz piano, tutoring Fats Waller and influencing the piano styles of Duke Ellington, Art Tatum, Thelonious Monk, and countless stride players.

Johnson began learning classical piano from his mother. When the family moved to New York in 1908, he was exposed to ragtime and blues at rent parties and in Long Island resorts during the summer. He studied classical piano as well as harmony and counterpoint with Bruno Giannini and he developed a superb, almost athletic technique, which set a standard that other stride pianists were expected to emulate. He would often introduce paraphrased passages from the classics into his own blues, shouts, and rags. Johnson also learned the repertoires of the eastern ragtime players like Abba Labba (Richard MacLean) and Eubie Blake. Johnson was known for his playing at a club called The Jungle, where poor laborers from the South danced to his solo-piano shouts. One can easily imagine from listening to his recordings decades later the relentless rocking rhythms he must have generated in that environment.

In 1917, Johnson began recording rolls for the Q.R.S. company. His original “Carolina Shout” [1921 and the audio track to the above video] became a standard for the era for East Coast pianists: [Duke] Ellington and [Thomas “Fats”] Waller, for example, learned it by ear.” Jazz Portraits: The Lives and Music of the Jazz Masters [New York: William Morrow/Quill, 1989, pp.307-308].

© -Burt Korall, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Buddy Rich. ‘Until the mid-1930s, I had never been any place where jazz was played. I was in another world, a world called show business that really had nothing to do with music. I lived in Brooklyn with my family when I was becoming involved with jazz. One Wednesday night in '35, a bunch of my friends took me to the Apollo Theater on 125th Street in Harlem for the amateur night thing. That was the first time I dug Chick Webb.

He was the total experience on drums. He played everything well. A little later, about the time I joined Joe Marsala at the Hickory House in 1937,1 went up to the Savoy to check him out again. What I remember most distinctly was that he was differ­ent and individual—not like Cozy Cole or Jimmy Crawford or any of the other cats. Even his set was different. He had cymbals on those gooseneck holders, the trap table, a special seat and pedals made specifically for him because he was so small.

Chick was hell on the up-tempos. He kept the time firm and exciting, tapping out an even 4/4 on the bass drum. That was something in the 1930s. Most of the guys downtown could hardly make two beats to the bar; they were into the Chicago style— Dixieland.

Chick set an example. He was hip, sharp, swinging. You know, only about a half-dozen of the top drummers since then, including today's so-called "great" drummers, have anything re­sembling what he had. If he were alive now, I think most drum­mers would be running around trying to figure out why they decided to play drums. That's how good he was!

As a soloist, Chick had no equal at that time. He would play four- and eight-bar breaks that made great sense. And he could stretch out, too, and say things that remained with you. It's dif­ficult to describe his style and exactly what he did. One thing is certain, though; he was a marvelous, big-band, swing drummer. Gene [Krupa] got to the heart of the matter when he said, after the Goodman-Webb band battle at the Savoy in '37, "I've never been cut by a better man."’ …

Webb in action made quite a picture. When swinging hard, he brought the entire drum set into play as he proceeded, moving his sticks or brushes across, around, up, and down the hills and valleys of the set. He choked cymbals, teased sound out of them, or hit them full; he played time and variations on the pulse on his snare, high-hat, cymbals, tom-toms, cowbell, temple blocks (often behind piano solos), and, of course, on the bass drum. He had facility to burn; fast strokes, with diversified accents, most often were played to forward the cause of the beat.” Drummin’ Men: The Heartbeat of Jazz – The Swinging Years [New York: Schirmer, 1990. pp. 19-21].

Glasses lifted to the early guys: no them – no Jazz.

Coltrane

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

One bar of music and you know it’s him.

Coltrane.

Anguish, angularity, an abundance of joy as in – “Look what I found!” – abound in John Coltrane’s playing.

The sound he gets on the tenor saxophone is as scintillating as it is searing. It goes directly into one’s soul.

His tone is pleasing and definitive to some, harsh and a plague on the instrument to others.

40-years of age and he was gone.

He was really only a force on the Jazz scene for a little more than a decade.

But in that relatively short period of time, he transformed Jazz while becoming one of the more divisive musicians in its history – this from a guy about whom the photographer Chuck Stewart once said: “I adored John. He was a sweet gentle person, a thoughtful, family-oriented man.”

We have no answer to this dichotomy. Mention John’s name and Jazz fans immediately fall into two categories: those who love his playing or those that hate it.

We love it: always have, always will, although we do prefer his “earlier periods" when there was less seeking and searching and more seeming satisfaction with having found a new approach to playing the instrument that followed in the footsteps of tenor sax pioneers such as Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young.

How could we have not featured John’s singular approach to the tenor saxophone sooner on these pages?  Shame on us.

But maybe this hesitancy was because so much has been written about John that we barely knew where to start.

And then it dawned on us: what better way to begin than with a video tribute to him that contains a sample of John’s beautiful way with a ballad?

On the accompanying audio track, the haunting refrains of John’s tenor saxophone are heard on You’re a Weaver of Dreams along with Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bassist and drummer Jimmy Cobb.

Should you require further, written commentary on John and his music you can seek out copies of J.C. Thomas, Chasin’ the Trane: The Music and Mystique of John Coltrane [[Da Capo], C.O. Simpkins, Coltrane [Black Cat Press], Eric Nisenson, Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest [Da Capo], or Bill Cole, John Coltrane [Schirmer].

In the interim, please enjoy this beautiful music.

“Coltrane … begins directly on the chorus with his pure, sensuous tone voicing a line very close to the original melody. … Coltrane appears more concerned with stating the melody clearly, then gradually reducing its familiar elements by replacing them with more and more connective material.”

- Don Heckman

Blue, Booker & Byrd

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

Trumpet players are a strong lot.

They have to be to push up all that air from their abdomens through the small bore opening in the horn’s mouthpiece to make a sound on the instrument.

The dynamics of playing the trumpet are also one of the reasons that some of them sing or play another instrument for a few tunes during a set; it gives their lips [AKA “Chops”] a rest.

Following the model set by Louis Armstrong, the earliest, significant solo instrumentalist in Jazz, many trumpet players were the music’s first “Rock” stars.

In addition to “Pops,” names like Bix Beiderbecke, Harry James, Bunny Berigan, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie and Miles Davis come to mind.

Although his fame was more limited due to his death at the young age of 25, Clifford Brown is another name that belongs to this august group of Jazz trumpeters.

In spite of his early death in 1956, Clifford Brown’s technical mastery and fiery style of playing captured the imagination of a host of young trumpet players who made the scene during the Hard Bop era including Blue Mitchell, Booker Little and Donald Byrd.

Thanks to the kindness of Kenny Mathieson, author of Cookin’ Hard Bop and Soul Jazz 1954 -1965 [Edinburgh: Canongate Press Ltd. 2002], the editorial staff of JazzProfiles did an earlier feature on these three trumpet players entitled Little Blue Byrd, the first part of which you can locate by going here.

We plan to repost this piece sans graphics in the next day or two on the columnar [left-hand] side of the blog. 

In the meantime, please enjoy this video tribute to Blue, Booker & Byrd.

The audio track is provided by Valery Ponomarev, another Clifford Brown-inspired trumpet player.  The tune is Lee Morgan’s Party Time on which Valery is joined by tenor saxophonist Don Braden, Martin Zenker on bass and drummer Jerome Jennings.

Chet Baker in Paris – 1955

“The combination of trumpet, piano, bass and drums, used for the first time by Chet Baker and Russ Freeman in 1953, was unusual for the period. It demanded a strange complicity between horn and piano.”

- Alain Tercinet

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles has been laboring for some time at translating passages from the French of Alain Tercinet’s highly regarded book West Coast Jazz [Marseille: Parentheses, 1986].

While this project is still in process and in order to give you a sense of his views and insights on the subject, we thought that we would share an English translation [done by Martin Deo] of Mr. Tercient’s insert notes to Chet Baker in Paris [4 CDs Emarcy 837-474/74/76/77].

In addition to their value for those interested in the career of trumpeter Chet Baker and his discography, Mr. Tercinet's notes also afford a panoramic view of both the tragic and creative aspects of the Paris Jazz scene over one-half century ago.

A video tribute to Chet and the music he made with American, European and Parisian musicians during his 1955 Paris sojourn closes this profile.

© -Alain Tercinet, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“1955. In Paris, Jazz was enjoying one of those heartwarming sunny spells. Record companies were not beating around the bush, recording musicians on their way through, and also French instrumentalists. Often with each other. The review "Jazz Hot," blithely celebrating its twentieth birthday, had been having com­petition since the end of the previous year, from "Jazz Magazine." Now settled just outside the capital, Sidney Bechet had become a familiar personality. His Antibes wedding, resoundingly splendid, was laid open to public curiosity in all the papers, and in the cinema newsreels. "Les Oignons" and "Petite Fleur" appeared on shelves in a respectable number of households, between Piaf records and Albinoni's Adagio. After a free concert by the Maestro, the Olympia theatre looked like a hurricane had struck. Claude Luter, a member of Bechet's band, along with Andre" Reweliotty, reckoned, not without humor, that an identical result would have been achieved if free vegetable-mixers had been distributed... Indeed.

The Vieux Colombier, the Caveau de la Huchette and the Kentucky remained the domain of the "St Germain des Pres New Orleans Revival" A stone's throw away, the Club St Germain, and the Tabou, the Cameleon and the Rose Rouge were flying the colors of modernism for all to see, with support from the Ringside, on the other side of the river Seine. It even seemed possible that this contemporary Jazz was moving out of its chosen haunts: the "Bobby Jaspar All Stars" had opened the first half of a program at the Olympia. The efforts of Henri Renaud, Marcel Romano and a few others were rewarded. The nocturnal creatures had already adopted the studied harmonies and ethereal sounds directly derived from "The Brothers" and their imitators, whether Californian or from New York For it was exactly this aspect of Jazz that seduced numerous French musicians.

The reasons were many and varied. The Bop revolution had been felt only recently, because of the Occupation. The "Be Bop Min­strels" with Hubert Fol and Kenny Clarke, took up the challenge, only to be confronted with another volte-face in Jazz, whose avant-garde was represented by Miles Davis' Nonet. Its impact was decisive: "It was when I heard "Boplicity" that I left the chemistry laboratory where I was working in order to devote myself to this music I finally judged to be worthy of an exceptional aesthetic future." When the author of this confession, the saxo­phonist Bobby Jaspar, arrived in Paris in 1950, he joined Henri Renaud to form one of the first "New Sound" formations.

Parisian jazz, at this time, had little cause to envy the Transatlantic kind, be it in quality or in the speed of its reflexes with regard to new happenings. As early as 1952, the young guitarist Sacha Distel returned from a business trip to the United States with the score of "Wildwood" in his suitcase, and even arrangements of "Thou Swell" and "The Song is You," given to him by Stan Getz before he had recorded them. Each visit by an American soloist brought new confrontations, resulting in a wider vocabulary, and refreshed inspiration. The leading lights of the new direction were nume­rous: Lee Konitz, Zoot Sims, Frank Rosolino, George Wallington, Jimmy Raney, Gerry Mulligan, Cy Touff, Bill Perkins, Dick Hafer... and most of them went into studios arm in arm with the French, Clifford Brown, Art Farmer and Anthony Ortega among them, with charts by Gigi Gryce and Quincy Jones.

The cornet-player Dave Amram, baritone Jay Cameron, along with Jimmy Gourley, Nat Peck and Lalo Schifrin, had been transformed into permanent guests of the Left Bank cellars. Following the likes of Dick Collins, Buzz Gardner and Sandy Mosse, and preceding Allan Eager, Al Levitt and a few others. These exchanges were not all one-sided: Henri Renaud had gone to the United States to record with Al Cohn, Milt Jackson and J.J. Johnson, among others, and since December 1954, Bernard Peiffer had gone to start a new career.

If one adds that Martial Solal and Andre Hodeir were beginning to be mentioned, one can easily measure the vitality of the Parisian jazz scene, of which Chet Baker was to become a component for some time.

He landed at Orly on September 5th, probably after some hesita­tion: "Jazz Hot" had just announced the cancellation of his tour. Not without provoking frowns of disappointment among fans and numerous musicians, the people most concerned by the news. As for the critics, who were clearly more reserved, they would once again turn a selectively deaf ear to the proceedings. When all seemed in order again, one question remained on the agenda: "Will the real Chet Baker correspond to the silhouette imagined by his fans?"

At that time, very few things were known about his career. His albums appeared in France in an utterly disorderly fashion, and, as usual, discographical information shone by its absence. That he had left Gerry Mulligan's Quartet was certain; even though he had been seen again with the baritone player and Phil Urso for a Carnegie Hall concert on March 12th that same year. And Gerry had joined the trumpeter's group at the Newport Festival... Various notes and a few brief interviews mentioned bookings with military bands, his discovery of Jazz through Stan Kenton's records, and appearances on the Pacific coast with Charlie Parker. Only years later did we learn that Bird chose him at an audition featuring the cream of the crop of Californian trumpet-players, and that on his return to New York, Parker had this word of warning for his former partners: "You better watch out, there's a little white cat on the West Coast who's gonna eat you up."

For the time being, this was the Chet who had turned a pretty and nostalgic song, "My Funny Valentine" into a masterpiece of nerve-tingling emotion and chaste lyricism. So it was thought he could play only confidentially, protected by subdued lighting, the better to distill an insidious sadness. Would he sing, perhaps? An aspect of his talent that didn't excite any enthusiasm, even amongst his worshippers, so strong at the time was the prejudice towards crooners. We were way off the mark.

Solidly centered in the spotlight, Chet Baker was to deliver a magnificent raspberry to this stereotyped image. People expected a musician murmuring in the mist, and here stood an incisive, powerful trumpeter with a clear tone. Which detracted not at all from the poetic side of his playing. The chairs which logic indicated should have been occupied by a group of Californians, in fact contained two Bostonians, Dick Twardzik and Pete Littman, plus a native of Philadelphia, Jimmy Bond. None seemed an adept of obsequious accompaniment, or fading from sight As for the repertoire there were the hoped-for standards, plus curious com­positions written by Bob Zieff, the third to come from Boston. The themes had twists that were quite unorthodox, with beautiful harmonic audacity.

The Quartet appeared on October 4th at the Salle Pleyel. Sidney Bechet was in the audience, the "Bobby Jaspar All Stars" and Martial Sola! were onstage, opening for the Quartet. The public reacted well. Between trips away from the capital, and to Ger­many, the musicians recorded an album for Barclay. Five more seem to have been planned. The Gods were on the visitors' side... until precisely the 21st. The day Dick Twardzik was found in his hotel-room on the Rue St Benoit, dead from an overdose.

It was a severe blow, but bookings do not have much to do with sentiment. Two days later, Chet appeared in London. According to union rules over there, Chet could not play trumpet. Accompanied by Raymond Fol, he sang four standards before stopping, over­come with emotion. Then things happened very quickly, after an argument, Pete Littman returned to the United States in a hurry. Bert Dahlander took his place. Jimmy Bond was quick to follow the drummer's example. From now on, Chet was on his own. Paris became the focal-point of his activities, the jazz scene being perfectly adequate for his musical plans, as we have seen. Me had some good times there, like his jamming at the Tabou with Lars Gullm. His fellow-musicians had a high opinion of him, and he in turn saw the merits of those alongside him: Maurice Vander, Rene Urtreger, Bobby Jaspar, Raymond Fol, Jean-Louis Viale, etc..

From then on, when Chet took to the road, or went into a studio, his company was French or Belgian. Jean-Louis Chautemps, Ralph Schecroun, Francy Boland, Eddie de Haas and Charles Saudrais went with him to Iceland, Scandinavia, Italy and Ger­many. Never before had an American jazz musician undertaken such a long tour of the Old Continent When he climbed into a plane in the middle of April 1956, Chet Baker had been away from the States for eight months. During that time, he had lived through tragedy, and also had moments of glory; as evidence, he left behind three of the best albums he had recorded. French arrangers, Pierre Michelot and Christian Chevallier, had especially written original compositions that emphasized his characteristic lyricism. The departing musician was not quite the same Chet Baker who had arrived the year before: he had matured, and gained confidence and authority. 

From now on, one thing was for sure; he was someone to be reckoned with.”