Jazz Standards: Soul Eyes and Stardust

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

“Standard. A composition, usually a popular song, that becomes an established item in the repertory; by extension, therefore, a song that a professional musician may be expected to know. Standards in jazz include popular songs from the late 19th century (e.g., When the saints go marching in), songs from Broadway musicals and Hollywood films by composers such as George Gershwin, Jerome Kern, Harold Arlen, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rogers, and tunes newly composed by jazz musicians (e.g., Thelonious Monk's Round Midnight, Dizzy Gillespie's A Night in Tunisia, and John Coltrane's Giant Steps).

Jazz musicians themselves, however, distinguish further between these categories, referring to the first as comprising dixieland standards, the second as unqualified or mainstream standards, and the last as jazz standards; it is the consensus that the essential repertory of standards is comprehended within the mainstream category. Many jazz performances are based on standards, taking not only the melody but also the harmonies of the entire piece, or more often the refrain only, as the theme (...); part of the impact of a performance based on a standard derives from its being familiar to the listeners, who are the better able to appreciate skillful arrangement and inventive improvisation because they know the original work.”

- Robert Witmer, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz

As it formed in my mind, the idea for this feature seemed a sound one and a fun one, too.

So I thought I’d have a go at the question of what constitutes a standard in Jazz?

This is a topic that I have returned to from time-to-time ever since I received my copy of Ted Gioia’s The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire [New York: Oxford University Press, 2012].

Actually, the process of periodically returning to the question of what makes a Jazz standard - what Ted refers to as “... the knowledge of the repertoire” - was in line with the way in which I read his book - intermittently.

Given the 250+ songs and the 2000+ recommended listening suggestions, Ted’s book contained  too much information to absorb all at once. Tracking down Ted’s recommended versions of each tune added further depth to the experience of identifying how and why a tune becomes a Jazz standard, but it is a time-consuming process.

Loosely stated, Ted defines the repertoire of Jazz standards as the “200-300 songs all Jazz musicians are expected to know; a Jazz performer needed to learn these songs the same way a Classical musician studied the works of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven.” [Introduction, p. 1; paraphrased].

On a related point, and much to the distraction of many of my Jazz buddies; I have always listened to the recordings in my collection, “vertically” instead of “horizontally.”

By that I mean, I study them - one track at a time - going over and over the same version of a tune rather than listening to the recording as it is programmed - one track after another.

Initially, my reason for doing this was to memorize all the drum licks, kicks, fills and solos as I practiced to them.

As my ear developed and as my melody-and-harmony friends taught me what to listen for in terms of these cornerstones of the music, I would listen to the same track repeatedly trying to pick-up on how the horn players, guitarist, pianist, et al. were building their solos on either the song’s basic melody and/or it’s chord structure.

After a while, I learned to pick-up on reharmonizations of the basic chords, how dynamics were used to enhance the overall texture [sonority] of the music, how bass players were “framing” chords behind the instrumentalist, etc.

Things to listen for in each, repeated listening of a track became almost endless.

With all this going on, I ultimately realized that Jazz musicians had so much to do while making up alternative melodies, reharmonizing chords and adding different “feels” and “textures” to the music that it really helped when the original tune fell easily on their ears.

Tunes that are easy to sing, hum or whistle - songs with melodies that linger in our minds and are easy to recall - are ideal candidates for the category known as “Jazz standards.”

Two such tunes - one old and one fairly recent - in the Jazz taxonomy are Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust and Mal Waldron’s Soul Eyes.”

Interestingly, both Hoagy and Mal are pianists, and yet, neither Stardust nor Soul Eyes sounds as though they were written for that instrument.

Soul Eyes

Or as Ted Gioia explains concerning the latter:

“The name of the late Mal Waldron may hardly register with young jazz fans today, and he rarely shows up on lists of significant jazz pianists of the late 1950s and early 1960s. But his impact during that period could be felt in an impressive range of settings—albeit usually as a sideman supporting a far better-known bandleader. He worked as accompanist to Billie Holiday in the final stages of her career and anchored the all-star band that performed with her on CBS in 1957—a setting where, in a manner emblematic of his career, he can be heard but barely seen. Around this same time, Waldron performed on Charles Mingus's Pithecanthropus Erectus and on a number of sessions with Jackie McLean and other artists. A few years later he held the piano spot in the seminal Eric Dolphy and Booker Little band that recorded at the Five Spot. …

Mal Waldron's 1978 solo piano performance — included in the CD reissue of his Moods album — shows how the composer interpreted his most famous work during this period. That said, I don't hear this song as a keyboard-oriented composition. Ballads with melodies that rely on so many long-held notes — such as Billy Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge," Wayne Shorter's "Infant Eyes," or this work — are clearly better suited for horn players.” [pp. 388-389].

Stardust

Similarly [but with an interesting twist concerning simplicity versus complexity], on the subject of Hoagy Carmichael’s Stardust, Ted comments:

“The composer claimed the melody came to him while looking up at the night sky, thinking of a girl — he then ran to find a piano to work it out before the inspiration left him. His biographer Richard Sudhalter has documented a more gradual and less colorful process of composition.

Judging by the song itself, Carmichael’s artistic vision was spurred less by a romantic attachment and more by his friend, cornetist Bix Beiderbecke. The latter's spirit and style of improvisation seem infused in the intricate phrases that make "Star Dust" arguably the most melodically complex hit song in the history of American music.

Jazz players, as a matter of course, find inspiration for their solos in pop songs, but how many pop songs take their inspiration from a jazz solo? …

By the early 1940s, one might have thought that "Star Dust" had run its course, but Artie Shaw brought the song back to prominence with his recording, which sold in bountiful copies during the first weeks of 1941. ‘The greatest clarinet solo of all time’ was Buddy DeFranco's description of Shaw's achievement. … Looking over this astonishing track record, I can only surmise that the composition's extreme complexity, normally the death knell for commercial success, here had the opposite effect, at least once "Star Dust" [the original spelling] had gotten over the hump of first exposure to the public: the intricate interval leaps in the melody kept it sounding fresh after many repetitions, where a simpler song might have seemed insipid within a few hearings.” [pp. 396-397, paragraphing modified].

To help you judge for yourself as to the universality of the melodies of these, two songs and why they have become Jazz standards, here are two videos of each tune offering very contrasting versions of Soul Eyes and Stardust in terms of how each has been approached by Jazz musicians.

Soul Eyes - Scott Wendholt, trumpet, Kevin Hays, paino, Dwayne Burno, bass and Billy Drummond, drums.

Soul Eyes - Steps Ahead - Michael Brecker, tenor saxophone, Mike Mainieri, vibes, Don Grolnick, piano, Eddie Gomez, bass, Steve Gadd, drums.

Stardust - Artie Shaw and His Orchestra

Stardust - Paul Desmond, alto saxophone, Dave Brubeck, piano, Ron Crotty, bass and Joe Dodge, drums.

100 Years of Recorded Jazz … well, almost! [and counting]

This post was originally published on August 29, 2010.

Given the fact that we are now four years closer, I thought it might be fun to have another look at "the birth of Jazz."

Hope to be able to re-post it again three years from now!

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

God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, in less than seven [7] years, Jazz recordings will be celebrating their 100^th anniversary.

Of course, we are hopeful that we will still be here on February 26, 2017 to commemorate the making of these first Jazz recordings, but we are also mindful of the admonition in the following Irish Proverb: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

On February 26, 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jass Band One-Step.  Available for sale on March 17, 1917 at a cost of 75 cents, Victor Recording #18255 was the first Jazz record ever issued.

In anticipation of this eventful day, and as a means of spending some time musing about the early years of the music, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has put together the following audio-video tribute to the creators of Early Jazz. 

The soundtrack is After You’ve Gone played by alto saxophonists Charlie Mariano – Jerry Dodgion and their sextet that includes Victor Feldman on vibes, Jimmy Rowles on piano, bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Shelly Manne. 

The track is from their Beauties of 1918 [World Pacific WP 1245] which is made up of a collection of tunes that were popular in and around the Unites States’ entry and involvement in the First World War [1917-1918].

Checkout the improvised-in-unison chorus that begins at 4:17 and which is used to close out the tune instead of a restatement of the melody.

The following thoughts by writer-musician Richard Sudhalter may help put Jazz from this early period in its history into a broader context:

“The ‘Great War’ left a new generation of disillusioned, worldly-wise Americans, determined to enjoy the pleasures of youth, and damn the consequences.

As John F. Carter’s oft-quoted declaration in the September 1920 Atlantic Monthly so eloquently put it:

The older generation had certainly pretty-well ruined this world before passing it on to us. They gave us this thing; knocked to pieces, leaky, red-hot, threatening to blow-up; and then they are surprised that we don’t accept it with the same attitude of pretty, decorous enthusiasm with which they received it, ‘way back in the eighties.

What better vehicle to express the indignation and sense of independence those words implied than five musical roughnecks [The Original Dixieland Jazz Band] from down south, making such a racket that Mom and Pop, and just about everyone else over the age of twenty-five, retreated in horror and dismay? Rock and roll, 1918 style.”

The above quotation [pp.18-19] is taken from Mr. Sudhalter’s Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz 1915 – 1945 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999].

Much like Early Jazz, because of its emphasis on the contributions of White musicians, Lost Chords itself caused quite a bit of controversy when it was first published, so much so that Mr. Sudhalter wrote a defense of it which was posted on the Challenge Records website when that Dutch-based record company released a two-CD companion set to the book in 2000.

Unfortunately, Mr. Sudhalter’s astute and quite brilliant writings on the subject of Jazz will no longer be forthcoming as he passed away in 2008.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would make its own ‘contribution’ to his memory and especially to Lost Chords’  broadening edification about some of the makers of Early Jazz by offering its readers the opportunity to read the piece he wrote for the Challenge Records website.

© -Richard Sudhalter/Challenge Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Talkback – And A Modest Proposal

By Richard Sudhalter

“Saxophonist-composer Bill Kirchner, a most perceptive fellow, put it perfectly: "this book is going to be a Rorschach test," he said, "but not for you. The ways in which people respond to it will tell you a lot about themselves."

How right he was. The book, of course, was LOST CHORDS, my 870-page chronicle of the contributions made by white musicians to pre-bop jazz. The nine months it's been on the market have brought a wide range of response, from thoughtful analysis to near-apoplectic vilification. Not that the latter came as any surprise. In these self-consciously compensatory times, anyone suggesting (in public, anyway) that this great music was born of anything besides the black experience is asking for trouble. Too many folks have invested too heavily in the dogma of exclusively black creationism to allow anything as awkward as mere fact to rock their neatly-rigged yachts.

Cushioning and empowering them is the current rage for moral and cultural relativism, reflexive male-bashing, historical revisionism, presentism (judging yesterday by today's notions and precepts), outcome-justified social engineering, indiscriminate demonization of white European traditions, and countless other perversions of the multiculturalist ideal.

Scholar-pedagogue Gerald Early summed it up in one review of LOST CHORDS: "It is difficult, in most scholarly circles, to write about American whites as whites these days unless one is being very critical of them." That's been the pattern lately in jazz perception here in the pre-millennial USA: the notion of white musicians as anything but brigands and exploiters, or feckless popularizers, is rigorously abjured.

LOST CHORDS has indeed brought out the telltale ink blots: it's shown some commentators to be fair-minded, intellectually upright, attempting in good faith - even when they disagreed with some of the book's assertions - to evaluate both hypothesis and execution. It's exposed others, in sometimes disheartening ways, as self-serving, self-deceiving, deeply prejudiced (in the true Latinate sense) and, above all, intellectually dishonest.

My main response to all the complaint and contumely has been to return to questions that dominated my long-ago days as a jazz reviewer for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post: what, exactly, is the responsibility of a critic? And to whom is he responsible? Everyone acknowledges the power conferred by just appearing in print (or on radio or TV); countless artists pander and flatter, court and cajole, for the sake of a feature, a two-paragraph review, even just a mention. It's an alarmingly one-sided process. Most critics (or reviewers, to accept Byron's implied distinction) enjoy a bully pulpit that's prominent, pervasive, all but unassailable. They write pretty much what they want - and that includes venting personal tastes, touting current favorites, even settling old scores. In some notorious cases they have been known to wallow in simple, mean-spirited subjectivity.

But hold: wasn't it Stanley Baldwin who declared that "power without responsibility [has been] the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages?" Surely being a critic or reviewer, especially an influential one, suggests an obligation to ask disinterested questions: "What is this artist (writer, composer, player) trying to achieve?" "Through what means?" "How skilled is he, how successful in executing his conception?" "Who is the target audience, and how effectively did the artistic product reach that audience?" "Am I being honest, informative and fair in representing what's been done here?" Significantly and justly absent from such a formulation is, "Did I, personally, like him or her?" "Do I like this (musical, literary, visual) style?" Do I, personally, find the conception or methods appealing?" "Is any of this in keeping with my own artistic (or political, or historical) beliefs and practices?"

The critical process remains skewed, one-sided, fortressed within the utter futility of any attempt to rebut a writer's pronouncements. Sure, there are letters-to-the-editor columns. But 'fess up, now: who among us can recall seeing such a letter (when it appeared at all) that didn't sound like whining, complaint, or plain olf sour grapes? It might be interesting and productive to grant performers, composers, authors a real forum of their own, allowing them to question, weigh, challenge the judgments of those who sit in judgment of them. To ask the unasked questions ~ even, where appropriate, to examine the credentials of those who occupy the bully pulpit.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen got that opportunity in late 1996, after his HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS touched off a worldwide firestorm of soul-searching and wild accusation. It came courtesy of The New Republic, which commissioned him to write an article that appeared under the headline, "Motives, Causes and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics" (TNR, 12/23/96). In an admirably restrained, even genial manner, Goldhagen dealt with doubters, detractors, and defamers alike, taking on issues of fact and interpretation. Exhorting one and all to define and justify their arguments about what was, after all, a deeply resonant subject.

Why, I thought, isn't this kind of platform universally available? And then, as if in answer to a prayer, along came the internet. In its very immediacy, ubiquitousness, and interactive nature, it seems an ideal medium, a tool, for use in dismantling the barricades separating critic from criticized. A chat room, perhaps, compulsorily attended one day a week by the designated critic?

Of course such a prospect confers rules and responsibilities of its own: no ad hominem (or feminam) stuff. No finger-pointing or name-calling. Just cogent, necessarily substantive questions, and honest answers. By way of illustration, a letter from one reader about my recent New York Times piece on writing jazz fiction complained that "Mr. Sudhalter's message seems clear: don't try to write about jazz unless you're a jazz musician... Are jazz musicians so unique (sic) that they fall into another category, too far beyond 'civilian' experience for a writer to reach?"

It might have been rewarding to open a dialogue with this correspondent by saying, Yes, sir, that's exactly my message. I believe that music, unlike police work or politics (the two other fields cited by the letter-writer), totally defines its surroundings and practitioners. Jazz musicians are their music. Absent that, they're just people making a living, eating meals, paying bills — no different from cops or politicos. But that's just the point: the music can't be subtracted: it's the defining essence, which sets musicians apart, makes them special and ultimately a little mysterious. Makes their various complexes and misbehaviors interesting to writers, chroniclers, fans.

Would British writer Geoff Dyer, for example, have found Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Art Pepper, and the other walking pathologies celebrated in his BUT BEAUTIFUL (Farrar, Straus, 1996) so fascinating had it not been for the music they made? Subtract the music and you have just another chronicle of aberrant thought and behavior. In a review of his book, I wondered whether Dyer would have been similarly drawn to musicians such as Henry Allen, Dizzy Gillespie, and Red Norvo, no less brilliant, who seem to have led balanced, eminently non-neurotic lives.

It all comes back, finally, to a self-evident fact: any writer, regardless how adept, who doesn't understand music will have a tough time writing convincingly about it, either as a critic or as a novelist. Such attempts invariably wind up, as Jason Epstein put it some years ago in The New Yorker, "as though someone who had never thought of holding a brush and had never considered the problems of color and volume had attempted a life of Cezanne."

Particularly relevant to the controversy surrounding LOST CHORDS is a note in which Goldhagen alludes to negative comments by Man openly hostile reporter who argued with me about my book even while admitting that he had read only a small portion of it." One of the radio interviews I’ve done since LOST CHORDS appeared was with a jazz "expert" who rather cavalierly questioned the very need for a book glorifying white musicians. Of course, he added, he hadn't read it - but "people," unidentified, had told him what it was "about" — therefore presumably qualifying him to pass judgment.

Then, too, buried on a back page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, was a critique by New Orleans-based writer Jason Berry. Dealing mostly with the book's introduction, and dipping only fleetingly into the text, the writer squandered precious column inches on such peripheral issues as Albert Murray's 1976 book STOMPING THE BLUES, the role of the long-ago Fisk Jubilee Singers in popularizing spirituals, the character of the legendary New Orleans figure Buddy Bolden.

"Sudhalter is right to assert a role for white musicians in jazz history," Mr. Berry declared in his final paragraph. "If only he had used more light and less heat to make his case." Heat? Search as I might, I could locate none, and none of the "strained polemic" Mr. Berry claimed to find. How sweet it might have been to counter such stuff on the spot. Strained polemic? Where, Jason? How? Show me. More heat than light, in a volume that scrupulously maintains a detached, even Olympian, tone? Chapter and verse, Mr. Berry, please.

And what, too, of the British writer who decried the book's "dense, lifeless prose, dotted through with sidetracks, points of barely relevant detail, and a great deal of repetition and deviation?" Let's place the reviewer (whose own book, launched by the same publisher and editor as mine, was not without its clunky passages) in the dock, having to support his every adjective.

Like Pip, in the still unsurpassed 1948 movie version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, parting the drapes of Miss Havisham's musty old room to let glorious light stream in, let's bring the jazz panjandrums out from behind their curtains and screens, invulnerable no longer - held to account at last for their every utterance.

LOST CHORDS has just gone into a second printing. Retrieval Records, a branch of Challenge, has issued a two-CD companion set, supplying 49 vintage cuts in illustration of music and musicians discussed in the text. Here are Bix and Tram, Bud Freeman and Adrian Rollini, Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, Red Nichols and Miff Mole — even such relatively obscure figures as Boyce Brown and Jack Purvis, in sometimes brilliant performances.

Never mind the racial rhetoric or quasi-authoritative edicts from "authorities" who'd have trouble finding B-flat if they stumbled across it in the dark. The music speaks eloquently for itself, calling upon those who would judge it and its players to establish criteria and credentials for doing so - or forever hold their tongues.

The defense rests - for now.”

In addition to Sudhalter’s marvelous book, for those who wish to read more widely on the subject of the beginnings of Jazz, Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development [New York: Oxford University Press, 1968] is highly recommended.

Here are three paragraphs from the Preface which will serve as an introduction to the work and as a conclusion to this feature:

“Although there is no dearth of books on jazz, very few of them have attempted to deal with the music itself in anything more than general descriptive or impressionistic terms. The majority of books have con­centrated on the legendry of jazz, and over the years a body of writing has accumulated which is little more than an amalgam of well-meaning amateur criticism and fascinated opinion. That this was allowed to pass for scholarship and serious analysis is attributable not only to the humble, socially "unacceptable" origin of jazz, but also to the widely held notion that a music improvised by self-taught, often musically il­literate musicians did not warrant genuine musicological research. Despite the fact that many "serious" composers and performers had indicated their high regard for jazz as early as the 1920$, the academic credentials of jazz were hardly sufficient to produce a serious interest in the analysis of its techniques and actual musical content. …

This history, the first of two volumes, attempts among other things to fill some of those gaps, to explore, as it were, the foothills as well as the peaks of jazz. In fact, this volume has been written on the as­sumption that virtually every record made, from the advent of jazz recordings through the early 1930s, has been listened to, analyzed, and if necessary discussed. A true assessment of an artist (or a particular musical development) cannot be made without reference to the totality of his work and its relation to his contemporaries. An analysis of Beethoven's Eroica or Armstrong's West End Blues without reference to musical history or the development of musical style could yield a certain amount of factual information, but a full evaluation would obviously be impossible without considering the authors' total oeuvre and that of their immediate predecessors, contemporaries, and succes­sors. The work of Johnny Dodds, for example, cannot be properly assessed without comparative listening to at least Sidney Bechet or Jimmy Noone. Similarly, jazz historians who write about the Original Dixieland Jazz Band without having listened to James Reese Europe or Earl Fuller recordings can hardly arrive at a reasonable evaluation of the ODJB.

Another approach employed here is to concentrate on those mo­ments, those performances, and those musicians who in one way or another represent innovational landmarks in the development of jazz. In a sense this book is an answer in terms of specific musical detail to a series of interrelated questions: What makes jazz work? What makes jazz different from other music? Why do so many people find jazz ex­citing? How did it get that way? It is as if I were sitting down with a friend not as yet initiated into the mysteries of jazz, listening to rec­ords, responding to the kind of questions a musician might ask, and sharing with him the excitement and beauty of this music. Thus the book attempts to combine the objective research of the historian-musicologist with the subjectivism of an engaged listener and per­former-composer. In this respect the book is directed particularly to the "classically" trained musician or composer, who may never have con­cerned himself with jazz and who cannot respond to the in-group jargon and glossy enthusiasm of most writing on jazz. Implicit in the perspective governing this history is the view that jazz is but one of many musical languages and cultures available to us in mid-twentieth century, and whether explicitly stating it or not, the book places jazz in that larger context.”

To be continued over the next seven [three] years and, hopefully, beyond.

Teddy Wilson: [Still] Elegant, Refined and Swinging [From the Archives]

Here at JazzProfiles, the editorial staff refuses to let the memory of the "old guys" - in today's parlance, "the Jazz Masters," - fade away despite the fact that this is what heroic 5-star General, Douglas MacArthur claimed would be the fate of "Old Soldiers." 

Listening to a bunch of clarinetist Benny Goodman's trio recordings with Teddy Wilson on piano and Gene Krupa on drums still puts a smile on my face, a gleam in my eye and causes my heart to skip a few beats.

Teddy Wilson, one of the true and enduring "Gentlemen of Jazz," was one heckuva piano player who could play pretty or fly and make it all seem so effortless.

© -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] ….”

Two Boys From Rotterdam [From The Archives]

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

The piano player on the gig asked me: “Do you have tympani mallets?”

I said: “Yeah, they are in my trap case, why?”

“We’re gonna play Invitation during the next set so you better go get them.”

I got them and when the tune was called, I used them to play a slow rumba beat on the drums.

With the snare drum strainer turned off, that gave me three tom toms upon which to use the tymp mallets to tap out a steady Latin-feel over which the tenor saxophonist played a lilting version of Bronislau Kaper’s beautiful melody to Invitation.

I first heard Invitation on an obscure George Wallington with Strings Norgran LP and later on a John Coltrane Prestige LP entitled Standard Coltrane, drummer Lenny McBrowne’s Lenne McBrowne and the 4 Souls Pacific Jazz LP and vibist Milt Jackson Riverside LP of the same name.

Over the years, versions of Invitation taken at various tempos and played in a variety of styles kept appearing in my Jazz collection mainly because as Ted Gioia explains in his marvelously-fun-to-read The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire:

“Invitation has survived solely because Jazz musicians have enjoyed playing it. [Kaper also penned On Green Dolphin Street and All God’s Chillun Got Rhythm, each of which garnered more interest from Jazz players than from the general public]. …

The song is usually taken at a medium tempo with dark hard bop overtones, but is capable of a range of interpretative angles. … Invitation is still inviting enough to keep Jazz musicians interested, and is likely to hold on to this constituency for some time to come.” [pp.201-202].

I recently came across the Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra’s version of Invitation and it along with their treatment of Cole Porter’s Love for Sale gave this piece its title and prompted me to write it in the first place.

The RJO big band arrangement of Invitation was written by Johan Plomp and puts tenor saxophonist Simon Rigter in the solo spotlight behind a driving beat which is laid down by bassist Aaaron Kersbergen and drummer Martijn Vink.

Checkout the screaming trumpet section that begins the shout-me-out-chorus at 3:36 minutes and the way they reintroduce the theme with quarter note triplets at 3:47 minutes.

If you close your eyes, you might be able to conjure up images of Zoot Sims taking one of his great tenor saxophone solos with Gerry Mulligan’s Concert Jazz Band as booted along by Bill Crow on bass and Mel Lewis on drums

Those tympani mallets were handy to have around because later that evening, we played Cole Porter’s Love for Sale in a style that was very reminiscent of the version that Cannonball Adderley and Miles Davis made famous on the forrmer’s Somethin’ Else LP.

[On this classic Blue Note recording, drummer Art Blakey used the tympani mallets to form a conga drum phrase behind his always-insistent, cymbal beat.]

Turning once again to Ted Gioia for commentary about the tune, Dottore Gioia has this to say about Love for Sale in The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire:

“By the 1960’s, the taboo associated with "Love for Sale" had faded [it was banned from radio play for years because its lyrics are sung from the prospective of a prostitute], and it became entrenched in the repertoires of Jazz players. And for good reason. The opening theme is suitable for vamps of all stamps, from Latin to funky, and the release offers effective contrast both rhythmically and harmonically. A tension in tonality is evident from the outset: this song in a minor key nonetheless parts on a major chord, and seems ready to go in either direction during the course of Porter's extended form. A composition of this sort presents many possibilities, and can work either as a loose jam or bear the weight of elaborate arrangement.” [pp.240-241]

The are a number of big band recorded versions of Love for Sale including one on Pacific Jazz that offers some exciting drum breaks by Buddy Rich [Big Swing Face].

In recent years, I have also become very partial to Johan Plomp’s arrangement of the tune which appeared on the RJO’s debut recording Introducing the Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra [2005].

You can hear this arrangement on the following video tribute to the RJO with Jan van Duikeren playing an extended trumpet solo in a manner that may rekindle memories of Clark Terry’s joyous flights of fancy on the instrument. Also listen throughout the performance for the kicks, fills and solos of Martijn Vink, one of today's best big band drummers. [See if you can pick-up the key change at 4:10 minutes following one of Martijn’s explosions.]

The Rotterdam Jazz Orchestra debut recording is available from Amazon and other online retailers and the RJO has its own website – www.rotterdamjazzorchestra.com – should you wish to find out more about the orchestra’s current activities.