Teddy Wilson: Elegant, Refined and Swinging

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

In her essay, Beauty By The Numbers [Smithsonian Magazine, November 2012], Dana MacKenzie argues that the essential requirements for mathematical beauty are simplicity, surprise and depth “ … in the sense that the best theorems contain many layers of meaning and reveal more as you learn about them.” [paraphrase]

Perhaps, the same can be said about the aesthetic beauty of the Jazz piano stylings of Teddy Wilson – he executes them in a simple, straightforward manner, he often astonishes by going to new places in his solos and the more you listen to him the more he reveals about the essence of a song’s structure [i.e.: it’s “theorem,’ if you will].

Teddy Wilson was – noticeably – the first Jazz pianist I ever heard.

I say “noticeably” because the big band recordings that gave me my first taste of Jazz had the occasional piano introduction by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, or Stan Kenton, but the piano in most Swing-era big band Jazz largely functioned as a part of the rhythm section.

Of course, there were some notable exceptions such as Jess Stacey’s extended solo from the Benny Goodman Band’s performance of Sing, Sing, Sing on the famous 1938 Carnegie Hall recording, but, for the most part, the piano player in these bands thumped out four-beats-to-the-bar along with the other members of “the engine house” that powered Swing music.

Listening to recordings of the trio and later the quartet performances that clarinetist Benny Goodman featured as “the-band-within-a-band” from around 1935-1938,  gave me my extended exposure to what author Len Lyons in his book The Great Jazz Pianists has termed “an instrument that has been central to the evolution of Jazz.”

Teddy Wilson was the pianist in Benny first trio and quartet and I was so taken with his approach to Jazz piano that I memorized his solos on Nice Work If You Can Get It, China Boy, Sweet Lelani, Moonglow, and Nagasaki.

Teddy is rarely discussed today with pianists such as Herbie Hancock. Chick Corea, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner and Brad Melhdau being more in vogue, but when he first came to prominence in the mid-1930s, Teddy was quite an innovator having developed his own style from influences derived from Earl “Fatha” Hines, Art Tatum and Thomas “Fats” Waller.

Teddy is often referenced by “modernists” such as Bud Powell, George Shearing, Nat King Cole and Bill Evans as someone who had a great influence on their playing and they in turn influenced those Jazz pianists who predominate today.

I love listening to all Jazz pianists because as a friend was fond of saying: “When you sit down at a piano, the entire range of music theory and harmony is in front of you in black and white,”

Or, to put it another way: “The piano is the most versatile and autonomous of all the musical instruments. No more perfect tool (…) for expressing music has ever been developed.” [Len Lyons, Ibid].

Fortunately, there has been much written about Teddy that analyzes and discusses his piano style including Loren Schoenberg’s essay for The Complete Verve Recordings of the Teddy Wilson Trio [Mosaic Records MD5-173, Gunther Schuller’s chapter on Teddy in the Swing Era [pp.502-12], an annotated description of his recordings in Richard Cook and Brian Moron, The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed., and a marvelous interview that Len Lyons conducted with Teddy which is included in Len’s The Great Jazz Pianists [pp.60-74].

One of my favorite expositions about Teddy is by Dick Katz, the late Jazz pianist and educator, which he prepared as the liner notes to a recording that Columbia Records issued in 1977 entitled Teddy Wilson: Statements and Improvisations, 1934-42.

This double LP was produced in conjunction with The Smithsonian Institute when its Jazz Program was under the direction of the esteemed, Martin Williams.

Thanks to a Canadian internet friend, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles was able to obtain a copy of Dick’s excellent liner notes to Teddy Wilson: Statements and Improvisations, 1934-42 which are particular valuable because of his pellucid comments about Teddy Wilson’s significance in Jazz history and the salient characteristics of his Jazz piano style.

© -Dick Katz/The Smithsonian Institute, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Anyone who has involved him­self with that beguiling, consuming presence called "jazz piano," either as player or listener, probably has his own list of innovators and es­sential contributors. But it seems to me that Teddy Wilson should be .included on anyone's list as one of the most significant artists.

As a jazz pianist myself, and one who was fortunate enough to have been Teddy Wilson's pupil, my re­marks on his work are necessarily somewhat subjective. In any case, it will be best first to establish some historical reference points in order to gain some perspective on his sizable contribution.

We will not deal with the body of ragtime music developed by Scott Joplin, James Scott, Joseph Lamb, and others, but begin with the great keyboard improvisers (rag­time was not an improvisational music). My list goes like this: James P. Johnson; Willie "The Lion" Smith; Fats Waller; Earl Hines; Art Tatum; Teddy Wilson; Count Basic; Duke Ellington; Nat "King" Cole; Erroll Garner; Thelonious Monk; Bud Powell; Bill Evans; McCoy Tyner.

Each of these men added new dimensions and they are the names I hear discussed most among other pianists as key influences.

Of course, Chick Corea and Keith Jarrett are names mentioned today, but at this writing it is perhaps too early to assess their impact on the future. Oscar Peterson is also a favorite topic but the jury is still out on whether the content of his playing matches his technical prowess. And there are many other pianists, of course—Hank Jones, Al Haig, Horace Silver—who perform with excellence and have exerted a considerable influence.

Reducing this list to those whose innovations have proven essential, and to those, each of whom have created a whole "school" of play­ing, we get:

James P. Johnson, "the father of stride piano." Earl Hines, the father of horn-like piano concepts and the first true rhythmic virtuoso. Teddy Wilson, the father of elegant, subtly swinging, lyrical playing. Art Tatum, every pianist's father and mother, inasmuch as he covered it all. Count Basie, the father of modern "comping," who also showed us the importance of know­ing what not to play and how to use silence effectively, as did Thelonious Monk later. Bud Powell, the father of "bop" piano and pioneer of the long, across-the-bar-line, single-note melodic line on the piano. Bill Evans, who enriched the standard song with fresh har­monies and voicings and who helped add a new suppleness to the rhythmic line. McCoy Tyner, who seems at this date important be­cause he applied the modal con­cepts of John Coltrane to the piano successfully —i.e., a running, "sheets of sound" right-hand against an insistent, stabbing left-hand accompaniment, using chords often voiced in fourths.

The records in this collection offer examples of Teddy Wilson's work between 1934 and 1942. By 1934, Art Tatum had thoroughly shaken up every musician within earshot, including many outside jazz. Teddy, too, was forever smit­ten by Tatum's genius. Earl Hines, who was then probably the most famous jazz pianist, led a scintil­lating big band and was exerting his monumental influence on most pianists, including the young Teddy Wilson. Count Basie was still plain Bill Basie, and had not yet burst onto the national scene with his innovative rhythm section. Boogie woogie piano was all but unknown except to black patrons in rural and big city gin mills and rent parties and to a few white record collectors. Many were still under the spell of Fats Waller and the stride piano masters. Cecil Taylor was one year old. Herbie Hancock wasn't yet born.

Except for Duke Ellington's work (which, to use a phrase he never applied to himself, was always "beyond category"), piano accom­paniment in the jazz ensemble, large and small, usually took the form of rather relentless, stiff (to today's ears) left-hand-right-hand-left-hand-right-hand "oom-pah" thumping, regardless of tempo. This often resulted in an intense kind of rolling swing—but it be­came a rhythmic box, and was quite limiting to many horn players who were beginning to want a looser, more sensitive background for their improvisations.

String bass technique was (ex­cept for a small few players) far behind that of the other instru­ments in jazz and the bass had mainly a percussive, timekeeping function. It is interesting to con­template what direction the music might have taken if bassist Jimmy Blanton had arrived five or ten years earlier than 1939. For ex­amples of pre-Blanton rhythm sec­tions, listen to early records by the Fletcher Henderson orchestra or by Fats Waller's ebullient little band.

In such a milieu Teddy Wilson shaped a more sophisticated way both to accompany and to solo in the jazz ensemble.

Born in Austin, Texas, Wilson was raised from the age of six in Tuskegee, Alabama, where his father was head of the English De­partment at Tuskegee Institute and his mother, chief librarian. He dutifully studied both violin and piano and went on to major in music theory at Talladega College, also in Alabama. Early exposure to classic jazz recordings like Louis Armstrong's West End Blues, Fats Waller's Handful of Keys, and the Bix Beiderbecke-Frankie Trumbauer records had a great impact on him. After moving to Detroit in 1929 and hearing the touring bands there, he made his commitment to be a full-time jazz musician. Early experience with Milton Senior's band took him to Toledo, where he met and came under the awesome spell of Art Tatum about 1930. From 1931 to 1933 he worked in Chicago with several well-(continued inside) known bands, including Louis Armstrong's.

One night in 1933, John Ham­mond, that irrepressible jazz super-fan who became the music's first and most active patron and bene­factor, heard Wilson on a radio broadcast with Clarence Moore's band from the Grand Terrace in Chicago. Hammond knew that alto saxophonist and composer-arranger Benny Carter needed a pianist.

He secured Teddy the gig and facili­tated Wilson's subsequent move to New York. Hammond also super­vised an important recording ses­sion with the "Chocolate Dandies" (imagine an all-black jazz group with that name today!) that fea­tured both Carter and Wilson.

Once Teddy was in New York and was widely heard, opportuni­ties to play and record became plentiful. He made records with Red Norvo's group and records ac­companying singer Mildred Bailey, and these did much to attract a wider, well-deserved attention.

It was also Hammond who ar­ranged for Teddy to lead the all-star recording groups that featured Billie Holiday. By now it is almost superfluous to point out how mar­velous and timeless these records are. They used the very best players available, including Lester Young, Ben Webster, Jo Jones, Buck Clay­ton, Roy Eldridge, Johnny Hodges, Benny Goodman, and others. And on them, Wilson achieved a re­corded legacy that is indispensable to anyone who is serious about jazz. Two of these collaborations are happily included in this album— These Foolish Things and More Than You Know—and notice the dates, 1936 and 1939 respectively.

For the larger public, however, the real emergence of Teddy Wilson came with the birth and the impact of the Benny Goodman Trio, and later the Quartet when vibraphonist Lionel Hampton joined. The Trio was informally conceived at a party at Mildred Bailey's apartment in June, 1935, and it seems that fate fortuitously brought together two of the most technically adroit per­formers since Louis Armstrong and Earl Hines collaborated in 1928. Prodded by Gene Krupa's "hot" brushes, Goodman and Wilson took collective improvising to a new level of clarity and precision, and attracted listeners who had previ­ously thought of jazz (quite wrong­ly, to be sure) as a crude and even primitive musical idiom.

Aside from Goodman's obvious virtuosity and keen sense of the jazz pulse, what really made the Trio unique was Wilson's vitaliz­ing and strikingly original concept of contrapuntal harmonic move­ment. He revised the conventional stride left-hand by outlining the harmonic structure of a piece with an uncannily well-placed series of both consecutive and "walking" tenths. This produced many inter­esting voice leadings and meshed beautifully with the work of the soloists. Against this smooth, flow­ing left-hand constant, his right hand in his solos spun out stunning, metrically immaculate, and ex­ceedingly lyric melodies in single-note lines or feather-light octaves. All this with a mellow, pearly touch. As Earl Hines before him had successfully adapted much of Louis Armstrong to the keyboard, so did Teddy absorb the messages of major figures like Benny Carter, Ben Webster, and Roy Eldridge.

And whereas Hines was a musical tightrope walker, Wilson purred along like a finely tuned Rolls Royce with soul, imparting to the listener a sense of security and balance. He was the first authenti­cally cool and controlled—but deeply involved—solo and en­semble pianist. He proved, as did Lester Young, that understatement can swing. But when called upon, Wilson could also generate terrific heat, as his fast, florid, and flag-waving pieces vividly demonstrate.

It is evident that Teddy's interest in "classical" piano and his diligent study and practice of keyboard techniques were an essential part of his development. Like Waller and Tatum, he helped explode the myth that, to be authentic, jazz pianists had to sound self-taught and crude. That he was able to adapt something as foreign as the "pianoforte" methods of Tobias Matthay to jazz verifies Wilson's resourcefulness and dedication to self-improvement.

Teddy, like Art Tatum, brought about a natural amalgam of Euro­pean and Afro-American musical practices. In this regard, Benny Goodman said of playing with him, "What I got out of playing with Teddy was something, in a jazz way, like what I got from playing [Mozart] with the string quartet." Certainly Wilson expressed his ideas with a delicacy and a symme­try otherwise then unheard in jazz. He was years ahead in his skill in sustaining a flowing melodic and harmonic line that perfectly com­plemented the soloist both in en­semble and solo. True, Waller and Tatum (one can't get away from those two) performed with great control and polish. But they com­pletely dominated any situation in which they might have been found, primarily because they were solo­ists who usually sounded best when they played alone.

Teddy's style immediately caught on and captivated pianists every­where. Even Tatum, his idol, incor­porated some Wilson into his own work—for example, the running tenths and some of Teddy's right-hand octave passages —and Wilson is naturally very proud of that fact. Indeed, I believe that Art Tatum's medium-tempo conception and even his approach to ballads was also affected by Teddy's graceful way with the pulse, by his flowing sense of phrase and legato touch. Tatum was a self-contained, one-man orchestra. His impact was rather like the fallout from a huge musical explosion—no one could get close to the center, but every­one was touched. Teddy's methods were more accessible, so long as your left hand could negotiate tenths easily. Thus, Wilson's in­fluence is in some ways just as far-reaching as that of Hines or Tatum.

It is my opinion that the two pianists who came closest to sound­ing like Teddy, both in content and spirit, were the late Sonny White and the Mel Powell of the middle and late 1940s. Clyde Hart was also a pianist who creatively assimilated much of Wilson, particularly the left hand, and was on his way to becoming an important and original piano voice in the burgeoning bop movement at his untimely death. And I am certain that younger pianists like Hank Jones, Al Haig, and Tommy Flanagan, among many others —and, to be quite immodest, myself—owe so very much to the Wilson magic.

The eight years represented here, from 1934 to 1942, span most of the swing era. In 1934 Teddy was un­known except to a few perceptive musicians, and by 1942 he was probably second only to Tatum as the world's most esteemed jazz pianist. Only Count Basic (basically a traditional stride player) en­chanted the public anywhere near as much, mostly because of his deceptive simplicity and ability to imply, both of which he best ex­pressed within his rhythm section of Jo Jones, Walter Page, and Fred­die Greene.

It was only a few short years until Wilson's all-pervading influ­ence finally gave way to the revo­lutionary flights of Bud Powell and the "new" music.

I am fully aware that all styles overlap to some extent, but I believe that there was a strong link between Teddy Wilson and Bud Powell in Nat "King" Cole during his years as a jazz pianist.

[And because] … Cole was a major force in their own stylistic development. He managed to distill the substance of both Hines and Wilson … [in the styles of many contemporary pianists such as Tommy Flanagan, Hank Jones, George Shearing and Bill Evans] ….”

More Treasure From JazzHaus

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

"This is the stuff collectors dream of. The numbers induce salivating: a literal trove of never-before-released live jazz recordings dating back to 1947, some 3.000 hours of music. In all, there are 1.600 well-preserved, German-made audio recordings and 350 TV broadcasts by more than 400 artists and groups... That's three down, 1,597 to go. Bring 'em on!"

- Jeff Tamarkin, JazzTimes

With the October 30, 2012 JazzHaus release of 3 more performances from the archives of the Südwestrundfunk [a regional public broadcasting company based in southwestern Germany], I think this may have brought the Jeff Tarmarkin’s yet-to-go number down to 1,594, but who’s counting!

Michael Bloom, a long-time friend of Jazz whose firm is handling the media relations on behalf of the US distributors for the series - Naxos of America, Inc. – caringly referred to these previously unreleased treasures from the Südwestrundfunk vaults “… an embarrassment of riches.”

Michael went on to say: “I met the JazzHaus guys at a Naxos sales conference this summer and got a peek at the future releases – Whoa!”

Perhaps it is just as well that these recordings are being periodically released in small batches as each contains so much great Jazz that it takes multiple listening sessions to absorb it all.

Here’s a closer look at the recordings in the latest series.

The Lost Tapes: Zoot Sims in Baden-Baden [JazzHaus #101710]

This concert recording lay long forgotten and lost to Jazz enthusiasts. A pressing issued in 1988 was flawed and of relatively poor quality. That alone was reason enough for allowing Zoot Sims and others one more opportunity to be heard.

What you get with Zoot Sims in Baden-Baden, recorded on June 23, 1958, is a single jam session with each number featuring a different line-up and instrumentation:

Zoot Sims (as, ts, cl), Hans Koller (as, ts, cl), Willie Dennis (tb), Adi Feuerstein (fl), Gerd Husemann (fl), Helmut Brandt (fl, bs), Hans Hammerschmid (p), Peter Trunk (b), Kenny Clarke (dr).

© -Ulli Pfau/JazzHaus, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

OPEN THE DOOR!

“In 1958 Sims played with Benny Goodman at Expo '58 in Brussels, where he met the Viennese-born Hans Koller, then Europe's coolest tenor sax. Two years earlier Sims had made a Blue Note recording with the German pianist Jutta Hipp and he was keen to meet other European jazz musicians. So Joa­chim-Ernst Berendt, head of the jazz department at the then SWF, invited the two to a studio concert, supplementing the horn section with Adi Feuerstein and Gerd Husemann, Willie Dennis and Helmut Brandt. The ensemble also featured Hans Hammerschmid on piano, Peter Trunk on bass and on drums Kenny Clarke, who had quit the Modern Jazz Quartet and moved to Paris.

What you get with Zoot Sims in Baden-Baden is a single jam session in which each number features a different line-up and instrumentation: Sims and Koller on tenor sax get in the frame with All The Things You Are, before switching to clarinet for Minor Meeting For Two Clarinets. Sims' brilliant interpretations of Allen's Alley and Tangerine are met with the nimble, elegant ripostes of Koller's Fallin' In Love and Brandt's I Surrender Dear. Blue Night (featuring a six-piece horn section) is a number which beguilingly alternates between big band and ensemble jazz. The same goes for Open Door, in which Kenny Clarke urges the ensemble inexorably onwards with every bar, and the alto saxophone of Zoot Sims briefly opens the door to allow the sound of the day - bebop - to flood the studio.”

Legends Live: The Albert Mangelsdorff Quintet [JazzHaus #101706]

Recorded live at Freiburg on June 22,1964  with Albert Mangelsdorff (tb), Heinz Sauer (ts, ss), Gunter Kronberg (as), Gunter Lenz (b), Ralf Hiibner (dr)

© -Ulli Pfau/JazzHaus, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“It is hard to believe this concert lay all but forgotten in the archives for almost 50 years - particularly as it marks the breakthrough of Albert Mangelsdorff as Germany's one true international jazz star. At the insistence of Joachim-Ernst Berendt, head of SWF's jazz department, the Goethe Institut dispatched Mangelsdorff and his quintet on a tour of Asia in 1964. Nobody had reckoned on concert sell-outs, a frenzied media circus, and prestigious honors. Back home and swinging from their encounters with Asian folk and dance music, the Quintet guested in Freiburg with a performance of pure avant-garde: a tense, frantic bop, shifting playfully between musical styles from Mali ("Burung kakak"), Thailand ("Ramwong") and Japan ("Sakura Waltz"), and ultimately reaching the point of entry to free jazz.

For five soloists at the top of their game the formula was a simple one: Heinz Sauer's tenor is Trane-like in quality (Theme from Father Panchali)-, Glinter Kronberg's alto (Set 'em Up) develops rugged, edgy figures in the style of a young Wayne Shorter; Gtinter Lenz on bass and Ralf Hiibner on drums combine to form a heart-lung machine that provides oxygen for the horns and oceans of space for improvisation. This material later gave rise to Now Jazz Ramwong, the quintet's best known recording. It would launch the ensemble to the top of the "downbeat" polls (Talent Deserving Wider Recognition). It also assured Albert Mangelsdorff a place in the pantheon of jazz greats.”

Legends Live: The Dizzy Gillespie Quintet [JazzHaus #101711]

Recorded live at Stuttgart, November 27, 1961 and Frankfurt November 29, 1961 with Dizzy Gillespie [tp], Leo Wright [as/fl], Lalo Schifrin [p], Bob Cunningham [b] and Mel Lewis [d].

The biggest surprise here is Mel Lewis, who supposedly, at the time, was a scion of the more laid back “West Coast” style of drumming, making these gigs with Dizzy and playing his backside off.

Taking nothing away from Kenny Clarke and Charlie Persip, who always did a magnificent job of booting Dizzy Big Bands along in the 1940’s and 1950’s, respectively, I always wondered what Mel, whom many consider to have been the ultimate big band drummer, would have done with that band.

Thanks to the addition of Argentinean pianist Lalo Schifrin, who also composed and arranged Dizzy’s masterful Gillespiana around this time, Dizzy is once again playing with fire and brio during these concerts.

© -Karl Lippegaus/JazzHaus, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

To Be or Not To Bop!

“The Mooche was written by Duke Ellington in 1928 for the trumpeter Bubber Miley. In his long version, performed in Stuttgart, Dizzy Gillespie explores it at length. Lalo Schifrin's piano solo uses block chords to further heighten the dramatic intensity of this soul remake. Schifrin had had doubts in 1960 whether Dizzy even wanted him in his band; he could never get hold of him by telephone and almost returned home to Buenos Aires. "I've had many mentors in my life, but only one master - Dizzy," Schifrin explained. "Dizzy is always hungry for new musical food. Calypso today, bossa nova yesterday, tomorrow - who knows?"

The trumpeter loved the open form above an Afro-Cuban rhythm, such as in Con Alma, the number he had composed back in 1956. He engaged the versatile saxophonist and flautist Leo Wright after a sensational concert at the Monterey Festival. Willow Weep For Me provides a reminder of his enormous talent on flute. Dizzy's hipster contribution is Oops-Shoo-Be-Doo-Be, a humorous pastiche on scat, from which Dizzy launches his solo like a fountain gushing skywards. In I Can't Get Started he throws in quotes and saunters through the upper registers as if it were child's play. The Frankfurt versions of Kush and Con Alma demonstrate how the Quintet is able to inject new life even into these familiar themes. The manner in which a muted Dizzy, without piano accompa­niment, dances with bass (Bob Cunningham) and drums (Mel Lewis) in Kush remains an audio adventure even today.”

The holiday gift season is right-around-the-corner; perhaps you can add one or more of these new JazzHaus CD’s to your Wish List?

Jeff Hamilton – “Time Passes On”

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

Drummer par excellence Jeff Hamilton and record and documentary film producer, Graham Carter, are once again doing great things for Jazz.

This time the gift-in-question is Time Passes On which was released on October 9, 2012 on Graham’s JazzedMedia label [CD JM 1059].

Made in conjunction with the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble which is under the direction of Bob Lark, Times Passes On is “a dynamic, swinging set of big band arrangements recorded “live” in concert at Chicago’s legendary Jazz Showcase.”

Graham’s press release goes on to say:

“- A dynamic, swinging set of big band arrangements recorded "live" in concert at Chicago's legendary Jazz Showcase. The intensity and brilliant performance of drummer/composer Jeff Hamilton and the DePaul Jazz Ensemble is beautifully captured, with the audience at the venerable jazz club adding to the electricity and excitement of the moment.

- Jeff Hamilton is featured as performer and composer with the critically acclaimed DePaul University Jazz Ensemble. Student trumpet soloist Marquis Hill (2012 International Trumpet Guild Jazz Improvisation contest winner) tenor saxophone soloist Rocky Yera (Chicago Union League Jazz Improvisation Contest winner), and arrangers Joseph Clark (DownBeat magazine DeeBee Award) and Thomas Matta (DownBeat award winner) are especially notable.

- Beautifully crafted arrangements from DePaul students, faculty and alumni includes tunes from the Great American Songbook (Shiny Stockings, The Days Of Wine And Roses, Back Home Again In Indiana, Nature Boy), original tunes by Jeff Hamilton (Samba de Martelo & Time Passes On), and members of the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble (Suggestions & Baby Steps).

Order information – www.jazzedmedia.com

The venerable Jazz author, Dr. Herb Wong, had this to say about the recording in his insert notes.

© -Dr. Herb Wong/Jazzed Media, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“TIME PASSES ON - Jeff Hamilton with the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble Bob Lark, Director

"One more once" is a signature shout associated with Count Basic, but it could be a jubilant request for an encore by the top drawer DePaul University Jazz Ensemble. Its latest CD, "Time Passes On" features guest soloist, jazz drummer extraordinaire, Jeff Hamilton.

The philosophy and ideational ap­proach of perpetuating the predictable practice of numerous college jazz ensem­bles is unfortunate since they subscribe to prosaic sameness. DePaul Jazz Ensemble, on the other hand, expects the unex­pected. Its program of improvisation and unmitigated swing is a welcome relief.

The DePaul Jazz Ensemble has reached a point of significant musical art, spirit, and mastery of musical craft. There is strong unity of curricular imagination and technique in prep and in performance.

Under Bob Lark's excellent leadership and teaching agenda, there lies a program of behavioral assets. Among the many here are the representative samplings:

•   Heavy weight given to improvisation

•   Copious listening to professional recordings

•   Focus on nuances of style

•   Length of notes, especially high notes, longer/louder as per content within a given shape of a phrase

•   Go through a lot of literature

•   Listening across the band - left to right, front to back

•   Need to determine what instruments must be in the foreground. If piano solos, saxes and brass understated re­gardless of printed dynamic markings

•   Cultivation of reed players

All of the above ingredients/key ele­ments are operational and instructional regimes. The effects/results are evident in the Lark directorship of DePaul Jazz En­semble s engaging past, present and future.

A vital part of its curriculum is the rewarding contributions of guest solo­ists/jazz educators. A number of these prominent icons include: Clark Terry, Louie Bellson, Tom Harrell, Phil Woods, Slide Hampton, Benny Golson, et al.

The remarkable master guest appearing on this CD is the notable Jeff Hamilton whose star bright credentials include nu­merous historical figures and a wide breath of contents/formats. Jeff comments, "There are many good college jazz bands today because of jazz education, but this band has a mature and professional feel about it - it has a lot to do with the personality of the leader - you and I remember and know when I was in Woody's band. Every big band has the personality of the leader. Bob Lark runs the band with a loose feel - that filters down through the band so it's easy to come in with this band right off the bat -they've been trained to do that.

I’m honored that my compositions were worthy to record and have others play and record my tunes with a band totally unrelated to me. Likewise, it was an honor to have a tune of mine as the title of the CD.”

Here’s an audio-only sampling of the music on Time Passes On as Jeff and the Depaul University Jazz Ensemble take on Miles Davis’ original – The Serpent Tooth.

Generations of Jazz – Watching and Learning

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

“Passing the baton” in Jazz is a recurring theme in the history of the music.

There are aspects about it that can’t be formally taught so they must be informally learned, in many cases, through observation.

Whether it’s King Oliver shepherding the gang of youngsters from Austin High closer to the bandstand at Chicago’s Lincoln Gardens so that they could more closely watch the music being made, or alto saxophonist Bud Shank holding forth at the back of The Lighthouse, a Jazz club in Hermosa Beach, CA, demonstrating reeds and mouthpieces to a group of admiring, teenage disciples, or Joe Morello bewildering a coterie of young drummers with a dazzling display of technique between sets with Marian McPartland’s trio at the Hickory House in NYC, the “old guys” help the “young guys” learn the music.

These shared gifts of knowledge and technique help The Tradition that is Jazz, grow and develop.

The late, bassist Ray Brown was particularly keen on helping to “pass-the-torch.” As I once heard him put it: “When you get off the train from Pittsburgh in New York City in the morning and you are working with Dizzy Gillespie’s big band that night, you gotta do what you can to make it happen for other cats. Not everyone is that lucky”

Among his many accomplishments, Ray fronted his own trios during the last two decades of his illustrious Jazz career in which he nurtured the likes of drummers Jeff Hamilton and Gregory Hutchinson and pianists such as Benny Green and Geoff Keezer.

To keep expenses down and their own revenue up, Ray and Jeff would make a swing of Europe as a duo. Contractors would then pair them with local young musicians such as British trombonist Mark Nightingale, Italian Jazz pianist Dado Moroni and Swedish guitarist Ulf Wakenius.

In club dates and the concert stages of the summer Jazz festival season, European audiences would get to hear their favorites performing with “the big guys” from the States.

On one such occasion in 1993, Stephen Meyner, owner-operator of Minor Music, produced a recording session with Ray and Jeff that featured three, young German musicians: Till Bronner on trumpet, Gregoire Peters on alto and baritone saxophones and Frank Chastenier on piano.

The results of these recording sessions which took place on May 1^st and 2^nd, 1993 in Cologne, Germany can be heard on a Minor Music CD which is aptly named – Generations of Jazz [MM 801037].

Jazz pianist Walter Norris points out the benefits of such a generational and international blending of Jazz musicians in the following insert notes to the recording.

© -Walter Norris/Minor Music, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“GENERATIONS OF JAZZ gives the listener a cohesion, found not only in the musician's performance but a cohesion of music existing in each musician's generation. Music that survives as art has this cohesive quality, yet, there must also be a "spirit of musical joy" and this joy combined with musical cohesiveness is heard throughout all these omnigenous titles.

The opening blues [Dejection Blues], their first playing together, was recorded in one-take and this "good omen" continued for the entire session. Ray Brown, the most recorded bassist in jazz and recognized as a master for his outstanding contributions with Oscar Peterson's trio, has perhaps formed an alliance with the musically compatible Jeff Hamilton, Peterson's percussionist, as they have become renown for their ability to energize, as a rhythm section, any assembled group regardless of instrumentation. It's touching hearing them project their warmth and affection.

Their example should be followed more... where the older, more experienced, give of themselves musically in order to bring out and mature the better qualities of a younger generation. Here, these better qualities, resulting from hard but gratifying work, sound surprisingly mature.

Frank Chastenier studied with the late Francis Coppieters, to whom his composition [This One’s For Francis] is dedicated. Gregoire Peters studied woodwinds with Allan Praskin and Heinz vonn Harmann. Till, whose talents extend to piano and drums, studied trumpet with Ack van Rooyen, Bobby Shew, Derek Watkins and Chuck Findley.

I remember hearing Gregoire when he was sixteen. Till, I believe was sixteen and Frank about eighteen when they entered the Bundesjazzorchestra - seminars led by Peter Herbolzheimer and it has been most rewarding for me to watch them grow and develop musically.

Although this is the group's first recorded effort, other recordings will surely follow for these young musicians will continue and survive this most difficult profession. Frank is contracted with the WDR Radio in addition to a teaching position at Hochschule-Cologne and Till and Gregoire are members of the RIAS Radio Orchestra.

All titles are cleverly arranged, the improvisations and original compositions are truly effervescent, yet, there's a seasoned maturity that will impress any connoisseur. Of course, this music is traditional but one is aware that phrases have been reshaped and molded which is reason to rejoice since, historically, music has always been traditional and changed only through a process where individuals mold and reshape harmony, form and phrasing. It's refreshing to hear the 'torch of music'' carried on by a new generation

Walter Norris

Guest Professor Piano Improvisation

Hochschule der Kuste, Berlin”

Dejection Blues forms the audio track to the following video montage having to do with paintings, illustrations and photographs, all of which were loosely gathered to fit the stated theme of the music.

I think that you’ll feel anything but dejected after listening to Till, Gregoire, Frank, Ray and Jazz make Jazz together. “Elation” may be more like it.

Sam Most and Rein de Graaff – Bebop Revisited

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

It's not very often these days that one gets to visit with straight-ahead Beboppers.

Jazz, like everything else, is a “product-of-its-time,” and, as someone once said: “The times, they are-a-changing.”

Of course, today’s younger players re-visit Jazz standards from the Bebop canon, but they can’t help but reinterpret these tunes and to make them their own because they hear the music in a different way.

Boppers like Bird, Bud, Diz, Miles and even the subsequent hard-boppers like Horace Silver, Hank Mobley, Elmo Hope and Sonny Clark are not the influence that predominates in today’s Jazz.

Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Jazz-Rock fusion, World Music … these, and many others, are the influences that color contemporary Jazz.

Like all generalizations, there’s plenty of room for dispute in the one I’m asserting, but I’m making it to serve a point.

And the point is that you don’t often here music played today like the ten tracks that populate a recently released Timeless CD entitled – The Rein de Graff Trio Meets Sam Most [CDSJP-485].

Rein was kind enough to send the editorial staff at JazzProfiles a copy and I thought it would be nice bring it to your attention for a number of reason, not the least of which is because it contains a ton of good music.

Being a former drummer, let’s begin with my bias – the rhythm section which is made up of Rein on piano, Marius Beets [pronounced “Bates”] on bass and Eric Ineke on drums.

Rein, Marius and Eric play good time: it’s crisp with just the right amount of lift and push. There’s a marriage between Marius’ bass line and Eric’s cymbal beat. They blend together and don’t conflict with one another so the time has a buoyancy to it.

With the exception of Marius [the “youngster” in the group], Rein, Eric and Sam have each been “speaking Bebop” for over 50 years and they speak the “language of Bebop,” very well indeed.

This fluency makes the phrasing of their musical ideas sound almost effortless, but this simplicity of expression is the sign of a true master. Nothing is forced in the music on this recording, it all just flows.

Rein “comps” [accompanies] beautifully behind Sam; constantly feeding him chords, or nudging him with rhythmic phrases and Marius and Eric just lay down the rhythm with a solid, metronomic beat.

Nothing is rushed; nothing is pressed or strained. One gets a chance to hear the music play out.

Sam doesn’t have the biggest or most robust tone on flute, but his sound is pure, warm and mellow.

And he knows what he wants to say and, whatever the tempo, he just takes his time in expressing it.

In a way, Rein has the toughest “job” of all because he has to be a part of the rhythm section, accompany Sam and also perform as a soloist.

But on this recording, Rein more than rises to the occasion and plays throughout the CD with a consistent coherence of ideas and style that brings me back to why I was attracted to Bebop in the first place.

Since the opening track Alone Together sets the tone for what follows in the remainder of the recording, I thought perhaps I’d stop here and insert an audio-only version of the tune as an example of what I have discussing to this point.

Jeroen de Valk’s insert notes explains how the recording came out and some of its salient features.

© -Jeroen de Valk, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“According to Sam Most's website, there should be no doubt about it: he was the world's first modern jazz soloist on the flute. In 1952 - he would turn 22 later that year - he recorded 'Undercurrent Blues' and thus made history. It would be impossible indeed to find an earlier recording with a decent bebop solo on the flute.

We do know for sure that Herbie Mann - a prominent flutist himself - gave his colleague full credit as a pioneer. Mann stated in an interview: "When I started playing jazz on flute, there was only one record out: Sam Most's 'Undercurrent Blues'. Not too many people know this, but Sam was also the first jazz flutist to sing and play together. The order of jazz flutists is Wayman Carver with the Chick Webb Band, Harry Klee with Phil Moore, and Sam Most - then the rest of us followed."

We know for sure as well that Sam Most was among the musician's musicians Dutch pianist Rein de Graaff would love to play with all his life. In his biography 'Belevenissen in Bebop' ('Adventures in Bebop', 1997), Rein mentions Sam Most as one of the lost heroes'; fine musicians who never became a household name, for various reasons and finally just seemed to have disappeared.

As Rein puts it, Sam happened to be 'at the wrong time at the wrong place'. "From the early 60s on, he worked mostly as a studio musician. As a result, he recorded extensively, but hardly ever as a leader. And: he was based in Los Angeles, not in New York, the country's jazz capital."

Rein, as a young man, adored the recordings Sam made for the Bethlehem label in the mid 50s. "After gaining experience in the reed sections of big bands, he won several jazz polls as a flutist. But after the 50s, I didn't hear from him again until the late 70s, when he was rediscovered by Don Schlitten, producer of the Xanadu label.

Schlitten featured him extensively, also as a member of the Xanadu All-Stars who were recorded live at the jazzfestival in Montreux. That was one of Sam's very rare appearances in Europe."

Schlitten reissued some of Most's earlier masterpieces and featured him on four albums as a leader during the period 1976-79; one of these, 'Mostly Flute", was awarded with the maximum of five stars in the prestigious All Music Guide to Jazz. According to the guide, 'Most makes the most difficult ideas sound effortless'.

A few years ago, Rein performed at the jazz festival organized by the Los Angeles Jazz Institute. "I checked the program and noticed there was a 'Sam Most Quintet' scheduled! I thought he had passed away long ago. Anyway, I attended his concert and he was just dynamite. I remember him opening with 'Confirmation': fast, precise and swinging real hard."

The two shook hands and agreed to do a tour together, late 2011, with Rein's regular trio, featuring Marius Beets on bass and Eric Ineke on drums. The trio toured and recorded through the years with literally hundreds of American visitors, including Johnny Griffin, Dexter Gordon, Sonny Stitt and many, many others. Rein: "We also backed quite some prominent flute players; Frank Wess, James Moody and Lew Tabackin, just to name a few." Eric Ineke has been part of the trio for over forty years. Marius, a generation younger, joined Rein in the late 90s.

Sam Most, in the Netherlands for the first time, turned out to be a kind, soft-spoken senior citizen. Rein: "Working with him was extremely easy. He reminded me of Al Cohn, with whom we had recorded as well. Al was doing crossword puzzles in the studio, as if he couldn't care less, but when it was time for him to blow, he played his brains off. We went into the recording studio with Sam after the tour. The band was so tight by that time, that we recorded solely tunes we hadn't done before on stage. We needed just one take for each tune. Discussing the repertoire took just a few minutes. It was like: 'You know that tune?' 'Let's do it.' Sam always plays attractive lines, knows the chords inside out and swings consistently." Sam Most concentrated on the flute and the alto flute -except for a short excursion on the rarely heard bass flute in 'Ghost Of A Chance'.

This CD is issued in 2012, exactly sixty years after Sam's recording debut as a flute soloist. Many years as a studio musician have kept him not only in relative obscurity, but also in good health, not having to be 'on the road' most of the year. In his 80s, Sam Most is still quietly blowing up a storm.

-Jeroen de Valk”

The following video contains, as its sound track, the group performing Indian Summer.

If you find yourself in the mood to listen to a current manifestation of Bebop in its purest form, I can’t recommend Sam and Rein’s new CD too highly as a source for satisfying that interest.

Ed Bickert and Lorne Lofsky – Ah-Leu-Cha

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

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

- Lorne Lofsky, Jazz guitarist

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

- Frank Rutter, The Vancouver Sun

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

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

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

- Scott Yanow, allmusic.com

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

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

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

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

Jack goes on to explain:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Francesco Guardi’s Venice with the Brussels Jazz Orchestra

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

As frequent visitors to the blog are aware, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has a penchant for viewing great art while listening to Jazz.

This usually takes the form of developing a slide montage of the works of a particular artist, adding a favorite Jazz recording as an audio track and then posting this “video” to YouTube via the dadocerra YouTube channel.

So when we became aware that this year Musée Jacquemart-André was offering an exhibit commemorating the 300^th anniversary of the birth of Francesco Guardi [1712-1793], whose paintings of the city of Venice are unsurpassed, despite the fact that Canaletto [Giovanni Antonio Canal 1697-1768] is more famous for his depictions of the city, we thought that Guardi’s paintings of Venice would afford us with the theme for our next Jazz and Art audio-visual compilation

“If Venice’s best-known painter, Canaletto, created imposing framed memories for Grand Tourists to enjoy back home, Guardi captured the city’s moods; its damp and heat; it’s evening sky, a dirty blue, the wispy clouds a pinkish color and the gondolas lit up by the fading sun.”

Because of its intimacy, the Musée Jacquemart-André is a special place to view art exhibits in Paris, a city that abounds with large museums that exhaust you from the exhilarating energy it takes to traverse them and to take in all of their treasures.

Like the Frick Collection in New York, the Musée Jacquemart-André presents collections worthy of the great museums in a magnificent private mansion that was built at the end of the 19^th century. It is located on the Boulevard Haussmann, one of Paris’ great thoroughfares, and it is but a short Metro or bus ride away from the Arc de Triomphe.

Exhibited in rooms graced with good lighting and plenty of places to sit and savor, the Musée Jacquemart-André’s “Canaletto and Guardi” [now until January 14, 2013] is “a joyous eye opener.”

In their review of this exhibit, the editors of The Economist went on to explain and to discuss Guardi’s significance and artistic appeal.

© -The Economist, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Francesco Guardi is unsurpassed as Venice’s poet in paint.  Last year a large view of the Rialto bridge sold for £26.7111 ($42.7) at Sotheby's, the second-highest auction price for an Old Master painting. Now, to celebrate the 3OOth anniversary of his birth, Guardi is the subject of two important exhibitions - a retrospective in Venice [Francesco Guardi, 1712—1793" is at the Museo Correr in Venice until January 6^th] and a Paris show pairing and comparing him with Canaletto.  Guardi has emerged from the shadows and his achievements glow.

Francesco Guardi was born and died in Venice. His father was a painter, as was his brother Giovanni Antonio. (Their sister Maria-Cecilia married another Venetian artist, Giambattista Tiepolo.) Guardi strug­gled financially. He was middle-aged be­fore he achieved any recognition and old before he was sought after. Fame came only after his death. In the 19th century he was feted as the bridge to Impressionism; some called him the first modern artist.

Archival information about Guardi's life is scarce and his pictures are difficult to date. Controversies about attribution dogged his last retrospective in 1965. Subse­quent scholarship has made authorship more certain.

The retrospective … [‘Canaletto and Guardi: Two Masters of Venice’ at the Musee Jacquemart-Andre until January 14^th] in Paris is a joyous eye-opener.

This is a tightly focused show of 50 paintings, all Venetian views and capric­cios. The freshness of Canaletto's early works points to why his pictures were so prized. Guardi saw these paintings and was clearly influenced by them. As the exhibition unfolds the older artist's vision hardens. Canaletto's people are there not as individuals but to provide scale for the architecture. His buyers wanted to recol­lect the city's beauty, not the life of its peo­ple.  Guardi the artist, if not the family man with bills to pay, benefited from having few clients and therefore only himself to please. Canaletto's Venice is a cold beauty, Guardi's city a living dream. The visitor leaves the Paris show smiling, full of admiration for his painterly spirit.”

We have no idea why this exposition of Guardi’s paintings called to mind a pairing with The Blues Goose as performed by the Brussels Jazz Orchestra, but it did.

Maybe it was all that blue in the Venetian skies of Guardi’s painting? Or maybe it was the fact of coincidence in that we were hard-at-work on two previous features about trumpeter, Bert Joris, who served as a principal composer and arranger for the Brussels Jazz Orchestra for many years? Or perhaps we were just looking for an excuse to look at the grandeur of Francesco Guardi’s art while listening to the 1995 BJO track from their Countermove CD entitled The Blues Goose?

Whatever the motivation, subjectively or otherwise, here’s the final result.

Solos are by pianist Nathalie Loriens, alto saxophonist Frank Vaganee [who also composed the tune] and Nico Schepers on trumpet. [You may wish to view the video at full screen by clicking on the directional arrows on the bottom right.]