Hoagy and Bix - "In A Mist"

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

Hoagy Carmichael, the famous songwriter, published two versions of his autobiography: the first was entitled The Stardust Road (1947) and the second was Sometimes I Wonder (1965) which he wrote in collaboration with Stephen Longstreet.

Both are nostalgic, and both depend upon an extraordinary recollection of decades-old dialogue — or perhaps in the case of Sometimes I Wonder, on collaborator Longstreet's novelistic talents.

Both books, of course, focus on Carmichael's early, close friendship with Bix Beiderbecke [1903-1931], the cornetist who along with other members of what came to be referred to as the “Austin High Gang” were among the first White Jazz musicians to take up the clarion call of Jazz masters such as Joe Oliver and Louis Armstrong who had brought the music “up the river from New Orleans” and performed it nightly during the mid-1920’s at the famous Lincoln Gardens in Chicago.

Aside from being the title of one of Bix’s few compositions, “In A Mist” might also serve as a reference to the cloud of alcohol that constantly surrounded Hoagy and Bix. The continual ingestion of booze was to kill Bix at an early age and make Hoagy into what some have referred to as a “mean drunk” in his later years.

Excerpt from THE  STARDUST  ROAD

“Christmas Eve in New Castle, with the little maimed tree, was somewhat different from the night I went up to Chicago to see Bix. It's the summer of 1923. We took two quarts of bathtub gin, a package of muggles, and headed for the black-and-tan joint where King Oliver's band was playing.

The king featured two trumpets, piano, a bass fiddle, and a clarinet. As 1 sat down to light my first muggle, Bix gave the sign to a big black fellow, playing second trumpet for Oliver, and he slashed into "Bugle Call Rag."

I dropped my cigarette and gulped my drink. Bix was on his feet, his eyes popping. For taking the first chorus was that second trumpet, Louis Armstrong. Louis was taking it fast. Bob Gillette slid off his chair and under the table. He was excitable that way.

"Why," I moaned, "why isn't everybody in the world here to hear that?" I meant it. Something as unutterably stirring as that deserved to be heard by the world.

Then the muggles took effect and my body got light. Every note Louis hit was perfection. I ran to the piano and took the place of Louis's wife. They swung into "Royal Garden Blues." I had never heard the tune before, but somehow I knew every note. I couldn't miss. I was floating in a strange deep-blue whirlpool of jazz.

It wasn't marijuana. The muggles and the gin were, in a way, stage props. It was the music. The music took me and had me and it made me right.

Louis Armstrong was Bix Beiderbecke's idol, and when we went out the next night to crash a …  dance where Bix was playing with the Wolverines, I learned that Bix was no imitation of Armstrong. The Wolverines sounded better to me than the New Orleans Rhythm Kings. Theirs was a stronger rhythm and the licks that Jimmy Hartwell, George Johnson, and Bix played were precise and beautiful.

Bix's breaks were not as wild as Armstrong's, but they were hot and he selected each note with musical care. He showed me that jazz could be musical and beautiful as well as hot. He showed me that tempo doesn't mean fast. His music affected me in a different way. Can't tell you how  — like licorice, you have to eat some.

The course of a wandering mind and an unreliable memory is erratic. The path of this piece is helplessly jagged from an absence of chronology.

However, there is a time. There is one time, a little fraction of an era, to which my mind reverts. I can remember that time clearly.

That is the spring of 1924.

I expect that Bix brings this about. He of the funny little mouth, the sad eyes that popped a little as if in surprise when those notes showered from his horn.

The spring of '24. Seems like the moon was always out that spring ... seems like the air of those nights was doubly laden with sweet smells. The air was thick and soft and pale purple. Grass was greener . . . moon was yellower.

Of course it helps to be young, and I was young.

Take a drink of whisky that tastes like kerosene in your mouth and a blowtorch

going down. "Best I ever tasted."

"Wonderful. Have another, Hoagy, and turn the record over."

The Wolverines had played a dance on the campus — one of ten dances I had booked for them — and Bix and I were lying in front of the phonograph early in the morning. We were playing the "Firebird" music of Stravinsky.

"Wonderful. Have another slug."

"What's wonderful?"

"Music."

"Sure. Whisky too."

"Guy used to be a lawyer."

"Who?"

"Stravinsky."

"Naw, Rimsky-Korsakov touted him offa the law."

"Touted him offa the torts, huh?"

"I dunno who he slept with."

"I said torts."

"Hell, I've slept with tarts myself."

"It's wonderful. Wonderful. Let's have another drink."

"Sure is. Turn the record over."

There was a long silence. "Why'nt you write music, Hoagy?" Bix asked softly.

"Naw, you're the one that writes the music. Every time you put that horn up to your mouth you write music."

"You write music, Hoagy," Bix said again like he hadn't heard me.

"You write yours different every time."

"What's wrong with that?" Bix asked. "I like it different. Like Rimsky-Korsakov. He heard this Stravinsky, told him to give up the law . . ."

"The torts ..."

"Leave that crummy joke alone," Bix said. "I got that crummy joke."

"Stravinsky study law?"

"Sure. Young guy like you. He studied law then Rimsy — ah, hell, you know who I mean — he told him to write music. So he wrote his. They dance to it."

"Dance to it?"

"Sure." Bix got up and did an entrechat, fell down and lay where he fell. I turned the record over. "Ballet," he said. "Hell, it's wonderful."

"Sure is," I said. "Give me another drink."

We lay there and listened. The music filled us with some terrible longing. Something, coupled with liquor, that was wonderfully moving; but it made us very close and it made us lonely too. With a feeling of release and a feeling of elation . . . and a feeling of longing too.

Silence. The record had come to a stop. A long silence and I was afraid to speak; afraid I'd spoil something. I can see Bix now, lying there, the music still playing in his head and me knowing it ... afraid to speak; afraid I might spoil a note.

Finally I spoke. A little shyly. "I'm learning to be a composer."

"Who's teaching you?" Bix asked idly, rolling his head on the floor so he could look at me.

"Everybody," I said. "Everybody's teaching me to be a composer. I learned to be a composer a long time ago. Every time I see a pretty girl I learn more how to be a composer. Every time I play a Bucktown dance I learn how to be a composer."

"Nothing wrong with you," Bix said, "except you're drunk."

            

“So’re you.”

"I never said I wasn't." He stopped. "Music kind of hits together in your head. Hurts you across the top of your nose if you can't blow it out . . ."

"But you can't blow it all out."

"You can try."

"Bix," I said.

"Yeah."

"Like what . . . kind of like with a girl . . . ?"

There was another long pause. Bix started up the phonograph and we lay there and listened to the music. Bix wasn't thinking about what I had asked him. He was feeling something, though, and I was, too. It was the same thing but we couldn't put the words to it. It disturbed us. Ours were a medley of moods.

"Kind of," he said, but he hadn't thought about it.

"Like going first to school when you are a little kid and being scared?"

He nodded, narrowing his eyes and looking at me.

"Like a quick storm comes up on the river . . . and a horn . . . Maybe Armstrong or Oliver, and the storm . . ." he said.

"Put on the next record, let's have a drink."

"Like playing a steam calliope on a riverboat with it hot as hell and the people dancing, all wet with sweat. Like blowing a horn," Bix said. "Like blowing a cornet. Like blowing a cornet."

"Bix," I said, "I'm gonna play a cornet."

"Sure. Everybody ought to play a cornet. Fun. Let's have a little one."

We had a little one and the sound washed over us as we lay there . . . two kids, kind of drunk, full of something and not able to put the words on it. But together, awfully together.

"Funny little horn," I said. "I'm gonna play me a horn."

It was nearing the Christmas holidays. Bix blew into Indianapolis and asked me to go down to Richmond with him to hear him make some records. He phoned me at my house and I hurried down to pick him up, in my new Ford, a Christmas present to myself.

When I found him he told me that he was on his way to make some records for Gennett, the same outfit that had made our record in the fall. I was delighted to go.

Remembering my own nerve-racking experience, I thought it would be doubly pleasant to be there with no worries of my own. I asked Bix who was going to be with him on the date.

"We're going to make some records in 'slow-drag' style," Bix said, "and I've got some guys who can really go. Tommy Dorsey, Howdy Quicksel, Don Murray, Paul Mertz, and Tommy Gargano. They are going to drive down from Detroit and meet me."

"Boy," I exclaimed, "that's really gonna be somethin'. What are you gonna make?"

"Hell, I don't know. Just make some up, I guess."

"How about me driving you over tonight?"

"That'll be swell ," Bix said. "The guys are bringing three quarts . . ."

"When do we leave?"

"Oh, three or four" Bix said, the idea of sleeping never entering his head. He looked at a clock that showed midnight. "Let's go over to the Ohio Theatre and jam awhile."

"Now you're talkin' . . ."

We got to the theater after closing and took our places at the grand pianos in the pit. There, all alone, we banged out chorus after chorus of "Royal Garden Blues."

And each interpretation was hotter than the one before. First one of us would play the bass chords while the other played hot licks and then we'd reverse the process. When we finally wore out it was time to leave.

We started for Richmond. And that night I reached greatness.

Bix is dead now, and you'll have to take my word for it, but on that night I hit the peak. We were halfway to Richmond, of a cold dark morning, when we stopped and for some reason Bix took out his horn.

He cut loose with a blast to warn the farmers and to start the dogs howling and I remembered that my own horn, long unused, was lying in the back of the car. I got it out.

Solemnly we exchanged A's.

"Way Down Yonder in New Orleans,'" Bix said.

He had hit one I knew pretty well and I was in my glory.

And then Bix was off. Clean wonderful banners of melody filled the air, carved the countryside. Split the still night. The trees and the ground and the sky made the tones so right.

I battled along to keep up a rhythmic lead while Bix laid it out for the tillers of the soil. He finally finished in one great blast of pyrotechnic improvisation, then took his horn down from his mouth.

"Hoagy," he said thoughtfully, "you weren't bad."

I had achieved greatness. We drove on into the night.

SOMETIMES I WONDER

Traveling with a big band is like being an inmate in a traveling zoo. Gags, ribs, girl trouble, money trouble, just trouble, bull sessions, card games, taking over the spare upper. Socks are traded, shirts stolen.

Chicago ran wide open. The Capone mob liked show folk. Whiteman, a powerful drinker in those days, had target practice with pistols, and beer drinking contests with some of the gang chiefs; at least, he often told the story.

In the Uptown Theatre in Chicago, where Whiteman's orchestra was playing, I stood in the wings and watched the boys go. Bing was often late. Between shows we gathered in the small basement rooms backstage and played hot jazz. Bix and Jimmy Dorsey were almost always in on these sessions. I also practiced what, for lack of a better word, I called my singing. I had a good deal of it to do in "Washboard" and the damn recording date was approaching.                                                                                                   

Bing [Crosby] came around while I was rehearsing once and stood there, hands in pockets, smoking a pipe.

"Mind if I glom on to the words, Hoagy?"

"No—but why?"

"I'd just like to learn it," Bing said, expressionless.

"What for?"

"It's such a swell number, chum, I'd like to learn it."

"Well, sure."

I didn't realize until later that Whiteman wanted some voice insurance in case I bombed. He wanted somebody there who could do it if I didn't. Bing was being kind to me. He didn't hint to me I might flop. They wanted to make a good record whether I was on it or not. Bing was always kind and calm, but he was more given to living it up before he became an American institution.

So I exercised my voice and observed life backstage. Crowds of jazz followers flocked to the stage entrance to see Bix. Many were musicians. They'd crowd around him and urge him to play.

"Come on Bix — just a few bars."

Bix didn't like meeting so many people. "It's driving me nuts. I try to remember them all, to keep them straight in my mind and not offend anyone."

"That's fame, Bix," I said.

"It's bad for my nerves. I get the heebie-jeebies."

There was always a bottle in his room. I would hear Whiteman ask, "How's Bix feeling this afternoon?"

Bix was Whiteman's pet. He loved Bix as if he had been his own boy. 

But the bottle stayed.

The side of "Washboard Blues" was made at the Victor studios, with "Among My Souvenirs" on the other side. I was so nervous I ruined a half-dozen master records and the best of a double-time trio arrangement. I had a lot of vocalizing to do and the piano solo I had done for the Gennett record was included in the arrangement. It was, for me, nerve-racking, jumping from one act to another. Whiteman remained calm.

"We'll get it all on this one."

I looked at Bing to step in for me. He looked away.

The control man said, "Recording — side six."

The opening notes began. Finally we got a master that was approved. When Leroy Shield came out of the control, I thought I saw a tear on his face. We were emotional slobs about music in those days.

I was a limp, wet, wreck — so relieved I was still alive and now silent.

Paul Whiteman was the biggest thing in bands. His father had been a classical musician who had a high school named after him in Denver. But Paul never practiced his violin properly, became a packing house worker (our early jobs crossed here), then a taxi driver. He drifted into popular music and soon had it organized.

As the King of jazz, he was the big name in the business, taking a fatherly interest in his men. He was a powerful liver, drinker, and worker. My being with him far exceeded anything that had happened to me musically so far. How much more it meant than the acquisition of an LL.B. college degree! College men would soon be peddling Hoover apples on street corners.

Any inner contest between Hoagy the musician and Hoagland the lawyer

never bothered me from that day on. I would be forced into mundane work

and might even have deep indigo periods of doubt and discouragement about my ability to succeed as a hot composer, but it was now certain that the basic pattern of my life and work was set. It was not a turning point, it was a break-through, all troops committed.

I left Chicago after the recording session in a burst of jubilation hardly comparable to anything I had known before.”

The following video tribute to Hoagy Carmichael and Bix Beiderbecke features Michel Legrand's arrangement of Bix's In A Mist with solos by Seldon Powell on tenor sax, Art Farmer on trumpet, Frank Rehak on trombone and Phil Woods on alto sax.

Warren Bernhardt – “Fun Ride” [From the Archives]

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

“It is to our great good fortune that Bill Evans left us many recordings. These span virtually his entire career and they accurately reflect what he was focusing on at any given time. In case you never knew Bill, or want to get to know him and his work better, or perhaps you have already began to forget how marvelously he played the piano – please take full advantage of his recorded legacy.

Thank you Bill for not forgetting us.”

- Warren Bernhardt [1982]

It’s no easy task to play Jazz piano in the style of the late, Bill Evans.

Understanding how Bill constructed his innovative harmonies and related chordal voicings is one thing, being able to execute them is quite another.

I had been aware of a number of pianists who were heavily influenced by Bill’s approach from his ascendancy on the New York City Jazz scene in the mid-1950s until his death in 1980.

Richie Beirach, Andy LaVerne and Joanne Bracken had all become quite adept at incorporating elements of Bill’s magic into their playing as had Denny Zeitlin and Michel Petrucciani [especially during the early years of his career]

So when Bill’s long-time manager and producer Helen Keane and Dr. Herb Wong of Palo Alto Records released a 2 LP tribute album to Bill a couple of years after his death, [PA 8028-2], it was no surprise to see their names [with the exception of Michel's] among the performers memorialize him with their interpretations of his music.

However, “Warren Bernhardt” was a name that was new to me.

But not for long.

His rendering of Bill’s Fun Ride on the Bill Evans Tribute album left me awestruck. What a magnificent interpretation this was; flawlessly executed and with brio!

Although I am by no means an expert on the finer aspects of pianism [the technique or execution of piano playing], I am of the opinion that it helps to have a strong background in Classical music to play Bill Evans’ music, well.

Bill adopted the harmonies and stylings of a number of 20^th century Impressionist Classical composers – among them Scriabin, Debussy, and Bartok – to Jazz piano.

A certain conversancy with this repertoire as well as the technical facility to perform it is a definite advantage when playing Bill’s original compositions.

Warren certainly has these traits in his background which may explain why he handles Bill’s very complex tunes so proficiently.

According to Gene Lees:

“Warren, whose father was also a pianist, had grown up surrounded by the major concert pianists of the era, including Rudolph Serkin. Warren played his first classical concert when he was nine. When he was ten, Serkin invited him to come to live and study with him. Warren declined, because he didn't want to give up his base­ball games with schoolmates.”

Warren worked in New York with Clark Terry, Gerry Mulligan, Mike Mainieri, Jack Dejohnette, Jeremy Steig, Tim Hardin, Jimmy Cobb, Richie Havens, Liza Minnelli, and Carly Simon, and he was a member of one of the jazz "super groups" of the eighties, Steps Ahead.

I don't think he's had the full recogni­tion he deserves. Some people have noticed, though. A French journalist wrote, "At the top of the mountain, deep in the pool of great genius where Bill Evans lives, there also lives Warren Bernhardt."

You can find out more about the details of Warren’s career and his current musical activities by visiting his website.

Here’s a sampling of what’s on offer in Warren’s music. The audio track is the very same Fun Ride from the Bill Evans Tribute album which first brought his marvelous talents to my attention.

Erwin Blumenfeld and Bill Evans - Superimposition and Overdubbing [From the Archives]

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

“Even when he pursued more mainstream efforts, [Lennie] Tristano seemed doomed to get caught up in controversy and partisan jazz debates. His 1955 recordings of Line Up and Turkish Mambo for the Atlantic label employed overdubbing and tape manipulation. Critics complained that Tristano "sped up" the tape of Line Up, and the resulting brouhaha prevented many from hearing the riveting brilliance of the improvisation. Played at any speed, it stands out as one of the finest jazz piano performances of the era.”

- Ted Gioia, The History of Jazz, p. 252.

“Conversations with Myself has aroused sometimes fierce views both for and against its approach, but in an age when overdubbing is more or less the norm in record-making, its musicality is more important.”

Richard Cook and Brian Morton, The Penguin Guide to Jazz On CD

“Evans used the overdubbing concept as a creative force, the three "voices" operating at different dynamic levels, initiated by his touch, and closely controlled by Creed Taylor's chosen engineer, Ray Hall. Often, a harmonic track functioned like a watercolorists background plane, a subdued level upon which lead voices could "perform" in highlighted tone. These might be improvised melodic lines, or fragmentary comments etched in crystal octaves. Sometimes a walking bass took over a chorus or two. The roles were also exchanged, the harmonic layer, perhaps, turning up in a different voice later on. In this regard, Evans achieved a feat of memory that took in the overall view. He even managed to breathe in unison with himself, as in the uncanny, threefold-synchronized phrasing of “A Sleepin' Bee.” …

“This monumental venture was a feat of endurance from the ailing pianist. He began to suffer from heroin withdrawal during the sessions, but he insisted on completing the job. Helen Keane and Gene Lees, deferring to his resolve, turned the lights down low and lent their heartfelt encouragement.

Although some listeners resist what they consider to be overkill, preferring Evans to communicate directly with them rather than with himself, it remains a work of staggering resource and beauty, appreciated especially (but not only) by professional pianists. Early the following year, the album brought Evans his first Grammy Award, and Britain's Melody Maker voted it jazz record of the year for 1964.”

- Peter Pettinger, Bill Evans: How My Heart Sings [pp. 143-144]

To take just two examples from the World of Art: when does Jazz or photography become less an artistic endeavor and more a gimmick? When do they lose their pure form and become a contrivance, a ploy, a publicity stunt? When do they reach a point of losing intrinsic merit in order to attract attention, arguably for commercial benefit?

For most of us, I think the answer to these questions becomes something along the lines of beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Some of us have more tolerance of things that entertain us such as Jazz or photography being presented in other than a “pure” form. For others, any alteration is sacrilegious

Overdubbing in music, especially in Jazz, and superimposition, particularly in photography, are two examples of altering the purity of a form of art that generally evoke outcries of deception, trickery and manipulation, especially if the artists involved reap a financial gain through such means.

I always thought that such protests were lame in the extreme and that the answer lay in the results that are achieved by the overdubbing, in the case of recorded Jazz, and via the superimposition, as relates to the finished photographs.

I prefer to view the end results of overdubbing and superimposition as the creation of a new texture: in the case of Jazz, a new sonority; in the case of photography, a new finish or feel or tone.

My line of inquiry in search of an answer to these questions was prompted by my recent discovery of the photographs of Erwin Blumenfeld and my rediscovery of two albums by pianist Bill Evans Conversations with Myself [Verve 821-984-2] and Further Conversations with Myself [Verve 314 559 832-2].

Both Blumenfeld and Evans received severed criticism for their supposed alterations of the sacrosanct processes of making Jazz and photography.

So I thought it would be great fun to compound the matter even further by putting Bill’s overdubbed piano and Erwin’s superimposed photographs together in the video that you will find at the end of this feature.

Bill Evans may be more widely known to the Jazz fans who visit this site, so here’s some background information on Erwin Blumenfeld from Lori Cole which she wrote for the Modernism Inc exhibit of his work in San Francisco, CA which ran from

November 4/2010 - February 26/2011.

“A Dadaist collagist–turned-photographer, Erwin Blumenfeld began publishing his fashion shoots in magazines like Vogue and Cosmopolitan in the late 1930s. Working with print solarization and superimposition, and using mirrors and gauzy fabrics to divide photographic space, Blumenfeld transformed both the models and their clothes into collage-like elements. In Fashion Collage, ca. 1950 — which depicts a woman laden with boxes, her head covered by a blank white spot, standing against a backdrop of New York City — he flaunts each fragment that makes up the work. In Nude in Stockings, New York, 1945, he isolates a model’s fishnet-clad legs from her torso, defamiliarizing the body as he emphasizes the product’s texture.

Blumenfeld creatively manipulated available technology to produce these images, posing a woman in black gloves and a dainty hat behind a chain-link fence to fracture her in Model with Black Gloves and Hat (for Vogue), Paris, 1939. In his works, the disjointed facets of collage are most often staged using mirrors. The model in Dayton Ad, New York, 1955, looks at her multiple reflections in the mirror, mimicking and returning the gaze of the viewer. This replication culminates in Kaleidoscope, 1961, in which a pinwheel of mirrors splinters the figure, recasting her as a design motif.

Spanning the artist’s commercial photography career through the 1960s, these vintage gelatin silver prints are rounded out with a few color images reissued by the artist’s heirs for the exhibition. In Red Cross (cover for Vogue), 1945, the model’s shadowy body melts into the cross that segments the space, with only the green of her hat distinguishable from the red lines that structure her. Sleek, off-kilter, and provocative, Blumenfeld’s fashion photographs showcase the artist’s fluency with Dadaist vernacular as much as the clothes he helped to promote.”

And, following the 2013 exhibition of his work at Jeu de Paume in Paris [which travel to Moscow in February, 2014], Blumenfeld was also the subject of this feature article in The Economist Magazine [November 9th-15th 2013].

The photographs of Erwin Blumenfeld

Tres glam

PARIS

A self-taught, self-made genius

“ErWIN BLUMENFELD arrived in New fork in 1941 with a suitcase, little English and no professional training as a photographer. Aged 44 and undaunted, he went on to reinvent both himself and fashion photography. He created over a hundred startlingly original magazine covers and countless fashion shots for the slick pages of Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. His images mirrored the energy and excitement of Manhattan in the 1940s and 1950s.

For a Vogue cover from January 1950, Blumenfeld used fierce light to erase a model's features, leaving only an eye, a mouth and a beauty spot. Another cover, this time to raise money for the Red Cross after the second world war, superimposed a translucent red cross over the blurred figure of a model in a turquoise hat (pictured).

"His images are sometimes so complex, it's hard to figure out how he did it," says Ute Eskildsen, curator of a retrospective of over 300 of his works at the Jeu de Paume in Paris. The show will then travel to the Multimedia Art Museum in Moscow in February 2014.

Blumenfeld's inventive images earned him fame as "the best-paid photographer in the world". Yet he chose only four fashion photographs for his book, My One Hundred Best Photos, published in 1981 (he died in 1969). He yearned to be taken seriously as an artist, and began experimenting with the medium during his pre-war years in Berlin, Amsterdam and Paris. On view are hitherto unseen drawings influenced by his friend George Grosz, a leader of the Berlin Dada movement, as well as collages made from his own photographs and magazine cut-outs. Blumenfeld's surrealist image of Adolf Hitler, his face distorted by a skull, covered millions of American propaganda leaflets dropped over Germany in 1942.

A series of nudes illustrates his fascination with the female form. Often headless, these naked women appear remote and mysterious, owing to Blumenfeld's use of mirrors, diaphanous fabrics and solarisation (a darkroom technique that inverts the lights and darks of an image). They reveal the influence of avant-garde photographers such as Man Ray, whose work he saw in Paris in the 19305. Blumenfeld's 1937 masterpiece, "Nude Under Wet Silk", earned him some art-world notoriety when it was published in Verve magazine.

Born in 1897 into a bourgeois Jewish family in Berlin, he got a camera for his tenth birthday. Aged 14, he shot a playful self-portrait dressed as the sad clown Pierrot, holding a mirror to his face to create a double image. "I wanted to be a photographer, pure and simple," he later wrote.

His aspirations turned practical after his father's death in 1913. Blumenfeld worked first for a Berlin garment manufacturer, then drove an ambulance in the first world war, yet he floundered in any job that did not involve film. After getting married in 1921, he set up a handbag shop in Amsterdam, and struggled to get by. He took advantage of a disused darkroom to experiment with portraits and nudes. "Blumenfeld was entirely self-taught, which is why his images have this unique, free-thinking quality," observes Ms Eskildsen.

Upon moving to Paris in 1936 he set up a studio with the help of an art dealer, Walter Feilchenfeldt. A magazine cover for Votre Beaute’ and an exhibition at the Galerie Billiet prompted a studio visit from Cecil Beaton, an English photographer, who swiftly secured Blumenfeld a contract with French Vogue. "His merit as an artist lies in the fact he is incapable of compromise," Beaton noted. One of Blumenfeld's best-known black-and-white spreads, published in Vogue in 1939, features a model perched on the edge of the Eiffel Tower, her flimsy dress fluttering in the breeze.

When war broke out in September that year, Blumenfeld was interned in a series of camps, including Le Vernet. He finally escaped with his family to New York two years later. Studios replete with staff and equipment awaited him, along with a contract with Harper's Bazaar.

This comprehensive exhibition traces a lifetime of creativity. Yet the visitor is ineluctably drawn to the self-confident glamour and colour of Blumenfeld's New York years devoted to fashion and advertising. This is where his true genius is visible. Blumenfeld helped define the way America saw itself-a remarkable feat for a man who described himself as "un-American for ever".

On the subject of the role and relevance of overdubbing in Jazz, Bill Evans felt so strongly in support of this technique that he wrote these liner notes to Conversations with Myself:

A STATEMENT... There is a viewpoint which holds that any recorded music which cannot also be produced in natural live performance is a "gimmick" and therefore should not be considered as a pure musical effort.

Because the performance and recording procedure used in this recording might stimulate this issue to a question in some minds, I requested the opportunity to state my firm belief in the integrity of the idea upon which this album was conceived and some supporting reasons.

To the person who uses music as a medium for the expression of ideas, feelings, images, or what have you; anything which facilitates this expression is properly his instrument. Though one can argue that sirens, airplane motors, ratchets, whistles, etc. are justified more on dramatic than musical grounds, no such question is raised here. In my opinion the only solid and interesting question that the music making here presents is that of whether this should be regarded as a group or solo musical performance.

Until the evolution of jazz group improvisation the history of Western music or music as we know it outside of jazz represents the reflection of one psyche. For the first time in a music of Western origin, jazz group improvisation represents the very provocative revelation of two, three, four, or five minds responding simultaneously to each other in a unified coherent performance.

I remember that in recording the selections, as 1 listened to the first track while playing the second, and the first two while playing the third, the process involved was an artificial duplication of simultaneous performance in that each track represented a musical mind responding to another musical mind or minds.

The argument that the same mind was involved in all three performances could be advanced, but I feel that this is not quite true. The functions of each track are

different, and as one in speech feels a different state of mind making statements than in responding to statements or commenting on the exchange involved in the first two; so I feel that the music here has more the quality of a "trio" than a solo effort.

Another condition to be considered is the fact that I know my musical techniques more thoroughly than any other person, so that, it seems to me, I am equipped to respond to my previous musician statements with the most accuracy and clarity.

Yet, I hesitate to state this recorded result is identical to trio performance or more valuable aesthetically or in depth or intensity of emotion. It is in the end still the product of one subject.

Looking at this album in reference to the preceding paragraphs, it would be difficult or impossible to place it solidly in either the group or solo category. For me, the unique and enjoyable experience of recording it was answer enough, and as is always so the music contained therein is or is not the positive evidence of its genuine quality.

I must extend my heartfelt gratitude to Creed Taylor and the expert engineers who worked and waited patiently through so many hours of unanticipated mechanical and musical problems until they were solved and we could proceed to get down to music and recording.

If you are now about to listen, I hope that you will forget any extra-musical questions, though they are often quite entertaining, and allow what I sincerely hope to be an enjoyable and, perhaps, in some ways, unique musical experience to take place.

BILL EVANS”

Recorded in January & February, 1963 Recording Engineer: Ray Hall Director of Engineering: Val Valentin Produced by: Creed Taylor.

In his award-winning book, Meet Me At Jim and Andy’s, Gene Lees offers this anecdotal background on Bill’s recording of Conversations with Myself:

“It was during that winter of 1962-63 that Bill got an idea for an overdubbed album in which he would play three pianos. Overdubbing was by now a widely used technique. It had been pioneered by Les Paul and Mary Ford, then used as a commercial gimmick by many singers, Patti Page among them. But it had rarely been used to serious artistic purpose. Neither Creed Taylor [in charge of Jazz artists and repertoire at MGM/Verve] nor Helen [Keane, Bill’s manager] nor I had any idea what Bill had in mind, but we took it on faith that he knew what he was doing. In January and February of 1963, the album was made in a series of remarkable sessions that made us all intensely aware of the clarity of Bill's musical thinking.

The album was recorded with the tape running at thirty inches per second. The industry standard was fifteen i.p.s., but the higher speed would more accurately capture Bill's tone. The album was made at Webster Hall, and the engineer was Ray Hall. Bill was playing Glenn Gould's Steinway.

Ray would tape Bill's first track. Bill was particularly fussy about the first one. He said that if that wasn't right, the other two couldn't be. Then, listening in headphones to what he had played before, he would add the second track, and finally a third.The four of us in the control booth—Ray, Creed, Helen, and I—were constantly open-mouthed at what was going on. On the second track, Bill would play some strangely appropriate echo of something he'd done on the first. Or there would be some flawless pause in which all three pianists were perfectly together; or some deft run fitted effortlessly into a space left for it. I began to think of Bill as three Bills: Bill Left Channel, Bill Right, and Bill Center.

Bill Left would lay down the first track, stating the melody and launching into an improvisation for a couple of choruses, after which he would move into an accompanist's role, playing a background over which Bill Center would later play his solo. His mind obviously was working in three dimensions of time simultaneously, because each Bill was anticipating and responding to what the other two were doing. Bill Left was hearing in his head what Bill Center and Bill Right were going to play a half hour or so from now, while Bill Center and Bill Right were in constant communication with a Bill Left who had vanished into the past a half hour or an hour before. The sessions took on a feeling of science-fiction eeriness.

In the acclaim for his tone and his lyricism, it is easy to overlook Bill's time. By this point in his life, it had become extremely subtle. But it was there. Bill made several basic tracks on Alex North's Love Theme from "Spartacus." Bill had seen the film with Scott LaFaro, liked the theme, began performing it, and added it to the jazz repertoire. He somewhat altered the release of the tune. After he'd made about six passes at it, Creed Taylor pushed the log sheet along the console to Helen, silently pointing to the times he had marked. Though there were retards and pauses in the music, the time on the first take was, say, five minutes and four seconds. The rest of the takes were 5:06, 5:04, 5:05, 5:06—never a variation of more than a second or two. The final take was 5:05.

Warren Bernhardt had said that Bill always played the essence of a melody. But on "Spartacus," he was playing more than the essence of a love theme, he was playing the essence of love itself, the essence of all tenderness. You love a woman with this feeling, or the autumn or a sunrise or a child.”

Many of the photographs discussed in the two essays on Erwin Blumenfeld are combined in the following video montage of his work and set to Bill Evans’ strikingly beautiful interpretation of composer Alex North’s Love Theme from the motion picture Spartacus.