Duduka Da Fonseca: A Drummer's Delight

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

When the editorial staff at JazzProfiles received a preview copy Trio Da Paz 30 [Zoho ZM 201602] featuring guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta and drummer Duduka Da Fonseca, it started a bit of a quest to locate more information about a drummer who had obviously been around for awhile, but who was new to me.

Duduka certainly impressed me with the clarity of his drum sounds and the light, yet insistent feel of the rhythms he laid down.

I knew that I had heard that name before - “Duduka” - one is not likely to forget such an uncommon name, but where?

Then it dawned on me: in an interview I had done with Jazz author and President of the Jazz Journalist Association, Howard Mandel, Howie had listed Duduka’s music in his list of favorite musicians on today’s Jazz scene.

In response to my request for “more Duduka” which I could reference to develop a blog feature on him, Jim Eigo at Jazz Promo Services kindly sent along a copy of Duduka Da Fonseca: New Samba Jazz Directions [ZM201310] which coincidentally contained insert notes written by none other than - you guessed it - Howard Mandel. The Trio Da Paz 30 contained commentary by Duduka himself and a nice overview of the highlights of Duduka’s career as written by Joachim "Jochen" Becker,” so I thought I would combine all three into the following blog posting at the conclusion of which you’ll find a video offering a sampling of Duduka’s music.

Jochen on Duduka

“For decades, Rio de Janeiro-born drummer Duduka Da Fonseca has been hailed as one of the leading drummer/band leaders in Brazilian Samba Jazz, the exciting hybrid of native Brazilian rhythms and American Jazz. "Growing up in Ipanema in the 50s was fantastic," Duduka recalls. "Its beaches were beautiful and pure. Ipanema was a neighborhood of mostly family homes with very few buildings and cars. We played soccer in the streets and climbed trees. It was peaceful."

"I was very fortunate that my parents loved good music. I was brought up listening to Antonio Carlos Jobim, Joao Gilberto, Dorival Caymmi, Luis Bonfa, Louis Armstrong, Nat King Cole, Frank Sinatra, Ray Charles and many others."

Duduka began playing the drums at thirteen: "I am self-taught. My way to learn was playing along with the vinyl records of the Brazilian musicians and American Jazz masters." Following several years of performing in Brazil both as a leader and a sideman, Duduka moved to New York in 1975. There, he followed his dream of playing with American Jazz musicians, blending the musical cultures of Brazil and the US. "When I arrived in New York City, it was a much different musical scene from today. Samba Jazz was not on the map at that time. I am very proud to be one of a few musicians who helped revive the Brazilian Jazz scene in New York City in the late 70s."

Duduka has appeared on over 200 albums and performed with artists such as Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astrud Gilberto, Gerry Mulligan, Claudio Roditi, John Scofield, Wayne Shorter, Tom Harrell, Eddie Gomez, Rufus Reid, Lee Konitz, Herbie Mann, Jorge Dalto, Joe Henderson, Kenny Barron, Emily Remler, Nancy Wilson, Slide Hampton, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Gil Goldstein, Joanne Brackeen, Marc Johnson, George Mraz, John Patitucci, Renee Rosnes, Bill Charlap, Maucha Adnet, Carlos Barbosa-Lima, and Phil Woods amongst many others.

Among these recordings are three prior releases as a leader for the ZOHO label, including: Duduka Da Fonseca Quintet: Samba Jazz in Black and White (ZM 200603) in 2006; Brazilian Trio: Forests (ZM 200806) in 2008; and Duduka Da Fonseca Trio Plays Toninho Horta (ZM 201115) in 2011. In 2009, his Brazilian Trio album "Forests" was nominated for a Latin Grammy in the "Best Latin Jazz Album" category. —Joachim "Jochen" Becker”

Duduka on Duduka

Samba and Bossa Nova (which originated from Samba) have been at the heart of my playing since the beginning. They are usually played on the drum set, with the traditional ostinato pattern (= dotted eighth/sixteenth notes) played on the bass drum. The "Sergio Mendes & Brasil 66" album, with Joao Palma on drums, is a good example of this way of playing.

But I believe that in Samba or Bossa Nova one can also choose to use the bass drum much more freely, without the obligation of playing the traditional ostinato pattern the whole time, using the bass drum to play syncopated accents as an accompanying voice. I sometimes like to alternate between the two approaches, even in the same song. I also love "feathering" the bass drum; a technique, as the word implies, in which you play very softly.

In America, modern Jazz bass drum syncopations and accents were developed by Kenny Clarke (1914-1985), who found a way to match the new conversational language of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk. Growing out of the styles of Chick Webb, Papa Jo Jones and "Big" Sid Catlett, Kenny Clarke's innovations paved the way for Max Roach, Roy Haynes, Art Blakey, Philly Joe Jones, Elvin Jones and many others, and changed the approach of Jazz drummers all over the world.

The concepts that were created by these legendary Jazz drummers were eventually adapted to Samba Jazz and Bossa Nova drumming. In Brazil, the first to do so was Edison Machado (1934-1990) whose 1965 recording "Rio 65 Trio" with Dom Salvador (piano) and Sergio Barrozo (bass) heavily influenced myself, Robertinho Silva, Ze Eduardo Nazario, Tutty Moreno, and several others. In the early 70s while living in Rio, I began to develop this way of playing Samba in a trio setting with Cesarius Alvim (piano) and Ricardo Santos (bass).

In 1975, I moved to New York to pursue my dreams; I fell in love with the city and have lived here ever since. It has been a great learning journey, and has led me to understand that gratitude, perseverance, patience and kindness are some of the key qualities that can lead to a better knowledge of life.

In the early 80's I began playing and recording with the pianist of the Rio 65 Trio, Dom Salvador, who had also moved to New York. In 1997 we recorded a joint album, "Transition" with Rogerio Botter Maio on bass. Because of the chemistry between us we were able to explore ideas of a more freely played Samba.

Years later I found a new trio setting in which to continue this musical conversation. Our first recording together was "Duduka Da Fonseca Trio plays Toninho Horta" for ZOHO Music.

David Feldman, Gutto Wirtti and I are able to think and feel musical time in uncannily similar ways, creating an ideal musical landscape for us to further explore new forms of Samba and Bossa Nova playing, using our roots for musical inspiration. The result is a time/beat with a much wider and elastic feel, but without losing the essence of Samba, which is in our blood.

Our new album was made in Rio de Janeiro where the sounds of our music originally took root at "Beco das Garrafas", (Rio's 52nd Street). Recording in the neighborhood of Ipanema where I was born and raised was a wonderful experience for me, and I hope that you enjoy listening to the album as much as we enjoyed making it. Here is our heartfelt effort to present New Samba Jazz Directions.

Deep thanks to David Feldman and Guto Wirtti for their invaluable musical suggestions. This album is dedicated to my beloved wife Maucha Adnet. Best of luck and peace. - Duduka Da Fonseca”

Howard Mandel on Duduka

Trio Da Paz "30" (Zoho ZM 201602)

Street Date: February 5, 2016

Romero Lubambo - Acoustic & Electric Guitars,  Nilson Matta - Acoustic Bass,

Duduka Da Fonseca - Drums

“Only very special collaborations last 30 years, and rarely do they become more exciting and together over the decades. Trio da Paz, however, is one such long-lasting and still lightning band. The team of drummer Eduardo "Duduka" Da Fonseca, guitarist Romero Lubambo and bassist Nilson Matta, all Brasilian jazzmen of New York City, is just as dashing today as when the three first met in 1985.

So 30, their seventh album and ZOHO debut release, wastes no time glancing back. Rather, Trio da Paz celebrates the past as a way to get to what's now and what's next. This is not to imply that the band or 30 denies history. As friends, Duduka, Romero and Nilson are utterly secure in their enduring triangle, and as musicians they tap well-established elements of bedrock Brasilian samba and bossa nova -- the music of Jobim, Gilberto and Bonfa -- as well as bebop and its developments, Wes Montgomery, third stream and even free improvisation for ingredients of their signature sound. Romero's urban gypsy melodies and percussive chording, Nilson's firm yet flexible baselines and Duduka's rhythms - which, whether surging or simmering, are always energized - flow fast and inseparably over the course of 30.

Sampa 67 is characteristic: A brisk tune that welcomes the listener to enjoy the musicians' empathic interplay. The composition is slangily named for Sao Paulo, where Nilson, its composer, was born, and his rubato statement is at the track's center. Hear how Romero and Duduka, in stimulating exchanges, ramp the tempo back up to where it started.

In a similar mood and moving quickly, For Donato is Romero's tribute to bandleader and pianist Joao Donato, a Brazilian master who absorbed Caribbean accents during his stints with Mongo Santamaria, Cal Tjader and Tito Puente, among others, when he lived in the United States during the late '50s and '60s. The tune uses an afoxe’ rhythm that comes from Bahia, and is closely related to an Afro-Cuban groove.

The pace slows somewhat - Duduka using brushes instead of sticks - for Romero's bossa nova Outono ("Autumn"). Says the guitarist-composer: "With its changing of colors and cooler days after the summer, autumn is really a season for romantic music." And this is really music for romance. Alana is Duduka's piece for his older daughter, now an adult. Her father says Alana's personality is reflected in the song, which changes meter from 15/8 to 6/8 to a doubletimed 4/4 for the bass solo to Duduka's own episode in 15/8. So may we assume Alana is a sparkling and strong woman whose many dimensions fit together gracefully? Complementary yet contrasting, Luisa is for Romero's daughter, currently 17. The guitarist calls her "a beautiful person inside and out, who I love very much!" Although written in 3/4 "Luisa" is not phrased as a jazz waltz but instead sways in a way that Duduka identifies as a waltz with a Brasilian lilt. Brasilian guitar virtuoso Baden Powell (1937 - 2000), obviously a hero to Romero, Nilson and Duduka as an early exemplar of the pan-stylistic approach Trio da Samba favors, wrote Samba Triste which at a breakneck tempo doesn't seem triste at all. Nilson's Aguas Brasileiras refers to the Atlantic ocean, which has exerted implacable influence on the Trio's native land. A ballad, the song moves in soft waves; the trio's improvisation opens up the theme's depths and crosscurrents. Nilson recorded this previously, on his 2010 ZOHO album Copacabana.

Sweeping the Chimney, which Duduka calls "fast, really fast," was inspired by workers attending to Romero's house in New Jersey. "Luisa was three years old when I wrote that," the guitarist mentions, "and she helped me decide some of the notes." Duduka contributed Flying Over Rio, the melody of which came to him in an airplane taking off over Guanabara Bay, giving him a view of the mountains around Rio and Sugar Loaf, their peak. "Wow, it was gorgeous," he remembers - also remembering to credit Paulo Jobim (Tom Jobim's son) with suggesting to him one perfect note that launched the bridge "in a completely different direction."

To conclude, Nilson's LVM/Direto Ao Assunto (the initials of his wife and sons/"to the point") goes in a flash from subtle reflection to searing line. Both of these songs have been recorded before by Duduka and Nilson with pianist Helio Alves: "Flying over Rio" in 2008 on The Brazilian Trio's ZOHO release "Forests", and "LVM/Direto ao Assunto" on that group's album Constelacao. Nilson introduced the song on the late pianist Don Pullen's album Kele Mou Bana, released in 1991.

That was just one year before Trio da Paz's own recording debut, Brasil from the Inside. Annotating that album, I wrote, "If North Americans hadn't invented jazz, surely Brasilians such as guitarist Romero Lubambo, bassist Nilson Matta and percussionist Duduka Da Fonseca would have." In fact, the members of Trio da Paz have invented jazz that's personally and musically unique. Their music is cool and hot, rooted in Brasilian heritage but cosmopolitan, timely and timeless.

"After 30 years together, we still bring the same energy, emotion and happiness whether we're stepping onstage or into a recording session," says Nilson. "That's the secret to Trio da Paz, what captivates our fans and why we keep making new ones all over the world." Romero agrees: "To play as Trio da Paz is a unique experience because the music always transcends notes, chords, tempos and anything written on sheet music. Naturally, because we've been playing together for 30 years, we know each other so well that we don't need to explain anything.

These are qualities that are impossible to teach or articulate in words. They come from the hearts, souls and feelings that we have as individuals and as a group." Duduka adds simply, "When we play, we're very organic and spontaneous. Even to songs we perform often, we like to take a fresh approach. Sometimes one of us does something a little different, and we all realize it's better, so we stick with that. It's like a democracy. We all have ideas and try to do our best." The best of Trio da Paz is very fine. And though journalists used to use "-30-" to indicate the end of a story, 30 whets the appetite for more from a band in its prime. - Howard Mandel”

Artist Websites: http://triodapaz.com and www.dudukadafonseca.net

Label website: www.zohomusic.com/

Lester Young on Clarinet 1938-39 - "I Never Knew" [Buck Clayton/Bill Basie]

The Impeccable Teddy Wilson

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

At time time of its publication in the January 22, 1959 edition of Down Beat magazine, Tom Scanlan, was 34 and  best known for his column Jazz Music, a weekly feature that he had contributed for six years to the Army Times, the international newspaper for the army. After three years in the army during World War II, he attended George Washington University where he received his master's degree in English literature in 1951. He had been associate editor of the Army Times for seven years. He plays guitar "as a hobby."

Tom Scanlan’s interview with Teddy Wilson not only underscores Teddy’s importance in the pantheon of Jazz Piano Gods along with Earl “Fatha” Hines, James P. Johnson, Fats Waller and Art Tatum, but it also serves to highlight Teddy’s honesty and integrity both as a musician and as a person of character.

For example, Teddy doesn’t hesitate to politely dismiss vocalist Billie Holiday’s autobiography - Lady Sings The Blues - as little more than a charade, nor is he willing to overlook the technical limitations in the “current” crop of pianists.

Interestingly, pianist Bill Evans had not become an influential force in early 1959; Teddy makes no reference to him during the interview, although he would contribute a track to the double LP Tribute to Bill Evans that Palo Alto Records compiled the year after Bill’s death in 1980.

Teddy was also a keen observer of what made certain Jazz musicians so special as is attested to by his opinions about what made Art Tatum, Louis Armstrong and Benny Goodman so great.

A quiet and humble man who rarely called attention to his own talents or contributions, this piece by Tom Scanlan is an important document about one of the greatest Jazz pianists in the history of the music.

In my opinion, Teddy’s only “failing” was that he made it all sound too easy.

“Hundreds of pianists have tried to create something new and worthwhile in jazz piano improvisation, but only a handful have succeeded. One who has is Teddy Wilson.

Surely, if a responsible list of the half-dozen or so most creative and most influential pianists in jazz history were to be made, Wilson would be included. He is one of the giants of jazz piano; the number of pianists he has influenced, directly or indirectly, is beyond estimation.

It often has been said that Wilson's distinctive and highly original manner of playing was influenced primarily by Earl Hines, but Wilson himself will disagree. "Art Tatum," Teddy said.

In 1929, 17-year-old Teddy Wilson, son of James Wilson, head of the English department at Tuskegee institute, left home to become a professional musician in Detroit. That year Teddy heard 19-year-old Art Tatum in a Detroit club, sitting in. From that time on, Tatum was the jazz pianist to Teddy Wilson.

"Yes, I liked Hines and Waller." said Teddy, "but compared to Tatum, it seemed as though they were in a different field of activity."

Wilson, a soft-spoken and extremely articulate man, continued:

"Tatum was head and shoulders over all other jazz pianists and most classical pianists. He had the exceptional gift, the kind of ability that is very rare in people. He was almost like a man who could hit a home run every time at bat. He was a phenomenon. He brought an almost unbelievable degree of intense concentration to the piano, and he had a keyboard command that I have heard with no other jazz pianist and with very few classical pianists— possibly Walter Gieseking — and it went much further than that, much further than being a great technician. Art was uncanny. He certainly impressed me more than any pianist I have ever heard."

What about James P. Johnson?

"I never heard James P. in his heyday," said Wilson, "and I'm sorry I didn't. When I heard him, he was rough. But while listening to John Hammond's record collection one night, I heard some piano rolls James P. made in 1922, and they were amazing. Some of his ideas in 1922 would be appropriate with many of the present Basie orchestrations."

Speaking generally of the stride piano style, Wilson — who is not a stride pianist — said, "I don't think it should be lost. It is certainly valid . . . Fats perfected the stride style. He developed the fine points. He had more finesse than any stride piano player I ever heard."

Wilson began studying piano while in grade school. He switched to violin "in the sixth or seventh grade" and played violin through high school, where he also played oboe and E-flat clarinet in the school's military brass band.

During his last two years in high school, he took up piano again because the band needed a pianist. "I could read the bass clef, and they taught me to read stock orchestrations," Wilson explained.

While in high school, Teddy said he began to listen to jazz closely for the first time, adding, "My father liked vocal music: Caruso, John McCormack, and also blues singers such as Bessie Smith, Mamie Smith, and Trixie Smith. I often heard these records in the house, but I would never play my father's records voluntarily because my major interest was instrumental music.

"The first records of importance to me were Singin’ the Blues by Beiderbecke and Trumbauer and King Oliver's Snag It featuring the famous Oliver break. Later, with Tuskegee students, I heard West End Blues by the Armstrong Hot Five, with Earl Hines on piano, and Fats Waller's Handful of Keys.

"In 1928, during summer vacation, I went to Chicago and heard professional jazz in public for the first time: McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Fletcher Henderson and Horace Henderson. Benny Carter was with Horace when I first heard him. Also Rex Stewart. And Horace was very good, too. Hawk, Buster Bailey, Jimmy Harrison, and Joe Smith were with Fletcher."

Harrison, who died in 1931, is one of the all-time greats of jazz so far as Wilson is concerned. "Jimmy had a real swinging style," Teddy said. "Now swing is not an objective word, but my conditioning of the swing feeling was the way Armstrong and Hines played on the Hot Five records — not the others, just Armstrong and Hines. And Harrison had my conception of swing. Another trombonist who has it is Jack Teagarden."

After hearing live "professional jazz" in Chicago, Teddy was determined to be a jazz musician, but his mother, Pearl, who like his father taught at Tuskegee, thought that Teddy should give college a chance.

She suggested that he go to college for a year and then if he still wanted to be a musician, to go ahead "and be a good one." So Teddy went to Talladega college, 60 miles from Birmingham, Ala. For one year. "After that, I still wanted to be a musician so I quit college, according to our agreement, and went to Detroit to become a professional musician."

Teddy got his union card in Detroit, worked club dates off and on for a few months and eventually joined a road band working out of Peru, Ind., led by drummer Speed Webb. The band included Roy Eldridge, Vic Dickenson, Teddy's brother Augustus on trombone, and all of the Bill Warfield band except for the pianist. They wanted Teddy.

"The Warfield group was very unusual," Wilson said. "These fellows, from memory, specialized in playing the Red Nichols repertoire. They could play the Nichols records all night from memory. Not just the ensemble but the solos, too." Trumpeter Reunald Jones, later with Ellington, was one of the Warfield band members.

Wilson worked with Webb from December, 1929, until mid-1931. He left the band to join Milt Senior in Toledo, Ohio.

The pianist he replaced in the Senior band was Tatum. Tatum left to concentrate upon solo work, primarily in radio. Wilson was with Senior, best known to jazz historians as the lead alto man with McKinney's Cotton Pickers, until the fall of 1931, when he went to work in the Gold Coast club in Chicago.

"This was quite a club," Teddy recalled. "A membership cost $250, and each member got a solid gold card . . . Al Capone would come in regularly after hours and bring in a party of 10 or 20 people. He'd always have a wad of bills, and everyone who worked in the place got something. Every member of the band got $20."

When the Gold Coast club closed because of a newspaper story concerning the gambling in the club, most of the band returned to Toledo, but Teddy remained in Chicago, jobbing around before joining Erskine Tate and later Francois' Louisianans. Then he went on the road for a few months with Louis Armstrong, with whom he made a dozen records.

"The main thing about the Armstrong band," according to Wilson, "was the way Louis could play so beautifully with such a bad band behind him. We had a few good musicians — Budd Johnson on tenor and his brother, Keg Johnson, on trombone — but it was not a good band."

Teddy paused to reflect for a moment and then chose his words with deliberation in summing up his feelings about Armstrong:

"I think Louis is the greatest jazz musician that's ever been. He had a combination of all the factors that make a good musician. He had balance . . . this most of all. Tone. Harmonic sense. Excitement. Technical skill. Originality. Every musician, no matter how good, usually has something out of balance, be it tone, too much imitativeness, or whatever. But in Armstrong everything was in balance. He had no weak point. Of course, I am speaking in terms of the general idiom of his day. Trumpet playing is quite different today than it was then.

"I don't think there has been a musician since Armstrong who has had all the factors in balance, all the factors equally developed. Such a balance was the essential thing about Beethoven, I think, and Armstrong, like Beethoven, had this high development of balance. Lyricism. Delicacy. Emotional outburst. Rhythm. Complete mastery of his horn."

After his tour with Armstrong, Wilson returned to Chicago and worked with Jimmy Noone and Eddie Mallory. ''Noone had a beautiful low register and was very melodious," Teddy said. "His playing was characterized by smooth legato playing."

In 1933 Wilson went to New York to join Benny Carter after the latter had gone to Chicago to hear Teddy with Noone on the recommendation of John Hammond.

The Carter band broke up after playing two jobs — the Empire ballroom and the Harlem club — and Wilson joined Willie Bryant's new band. Bryant was not a musician, but a showman, and bookers had the idea that he could make it like Cab Calloway. It didn't quite work out that way, but Wilson was with Bryant until 1935.

After that, Teddy had two jobs: backing the Charioteers quintet on radio and as intermission pianist at the Famous Door on 52nd St.

In '35, Teddy also began making his famous series of records featuring singer Billie Holiday and many great jazz musicians.

These records date from '35 to '40, and any list of the most influential and most stimulating jazz records of all time would have to include some of these sides, as good today as they were then. How many musicians became jazz musicians because of Lester Young's solos or Roy Eldridge's solos or Wilson's solos on these records? No one can tell. But it probably is a long list containing some distinguished names.

Has Wilson read Miss Holiday's autobiography, Lady Sings the Blues?

He has. Quickly.

"And I don't think much of it," he said. 'It's full of distorted emphasis and sheer fabrication. I don't see how anyone could write a book like that."

The pianist's evaluation of some of the musicians of that period, particularly those he played with on the memorable Holiday records, include the following regarding Young:

"I think Lester is one of the great landmarks in jazz. When Hawk was the yardstick of tenor playing, Lester came along with something different and valuable, based on great originality and skill."

Teddy said he considers Young as one of the three most influential musicians in jazz, the others being Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker.

"I certainly think Lester belongs in there somewhere," Wilson said. "But he has never seemed quite the same since the war . . . On the record I made with him in '56, I thought he had some of his prewar sparkle, but this was made when he had

just been released from the hospital and had not been drinking." (Teddy refers to Giants of Jazz '56, Norgran 1056, reissued recently as Jazz Giants, American Recording Society G 444.)

Parenthetically, Wilson added, "Guys who think they play better when they are loaded, are out of their minds. When you are drinking, the sparkle is gone. A musician who has been drinking might feel like he's playing better, but he's not. You'd think some musicians who drink would listen to the records they've made while they've been drinking and realize this, but they don't."

It was also in 1935 that Wilson jammed with Benny Goodman at a party given by singer Mildred Bailey. The results of this trio session (the drummer was "Mildred's cousin, a test pilot, an amateur drummer") helped to shape the course of jazz and bring Wilson international fame with Goodman.

Because of the exciting way Teddy and Benny improvised together, John Hammond wanted to record them, and he decided to use Gene Krupa on drums. At that time, Krupa was with Mal Hallett's band. Hammond arranged the record date with RCA Victor and the justly famous Goodman trio was born.

Wilson's first non-recording job with Goodman was at the Congress hotel in Chicago on Easter Sunday, 1936. Hammond drummed up the idea of Sunday afternoon jazz concerts at the hotel with outside musicians as guest stars, and Wilson was one of the first to be featured. He was such a hit that he was asked to join the band as a steady member.

As the first Negro featured with a nationally known white band, did Wilson have much trouble with racial prejudice while working with Goodman?

"Only in regards to hotels . . . sleeping accommodations and hotel restaurants," Wilson remembered.

Only in the South?

"Oh, no, North and South. And there was another thing, too. The first movie we did — I think it was called The Big Broadcast of 1937, something like that — the movie people wanted me to play the sound track but wouldn't allow me to be photographed. I didn't agree to that, and I wasn't in the movie."

Speaking generally of the swing era, Wilson said, "It was a very exciting period. The Goodman band was the first jazz to become a nationally popular thing, and it took us all by surprise. No one expected it. And in those years, the audience would even applaud a good figuration. You never see that now!

"Of course, a big part of the audience was sensitive to showmanship — the drum solos, for example — but a good many people in the audience were obviously musically sensitive. In contrast, the audience today is so jaded. They have to be entertained. It's a problem that young musicians must face.

"Music is something like baseball, movies, or any other entertainment medium in that respect. It isn't easy, and it sometimes calls for values that are not musical. Today, music is not the thing, as it was then. I imagine it's discouraging for a good young musician today when he sees how successful a mediocre musician can be."

Teddy said he believes that a major reason why the Goodman band was able to become the first nationally popular jazz band is because Benny kept music at danceable tempos. He elaborated:

"Goodman would sometimes stand in front of the band, tapping his foot for as long as a minute, almost as if feeling the pulse of the dancers, to assure the proper time." Wilson added that the band had "a good sound, one of the great clarinet players, good intonation in the reed section, first-rate trumpet work, and other musical values, and it was playing within the dance tradition."

Wilson said jazz has lost the mass audience partly because it came to ignore dancers. "And so rock 'n' roll, as bad as it is, is filling the vacuum. "Ellington, of course, has always had high musical standards, as well as a good dance band, too. He's done an amazing job over the years to keep his band in touch with the public while doing other things in music, too."

Wilson left Goodman in 1939 to form his own big band. The band lasted about a year and was not a commercial success although it won high praise from musicians and critics. Of this band, Wilson said: "The band simply didn't have much mass appeal. We didn't have enough show pieces. We played good dance music, but we needed 10 to 20 good stomp head arrangements to add the excitement that was missing. The mistake I made was in concentrating too much on written arrangements."

From 1940 to 1944, Wilson fronted highly praised all-star sextets at the two Cafes Society, Uptown and Downtown, and in 1945 he rejoined Goodman, working with Red Norvo and Slam Stewart in the Goodman sextet.

During the next decade, Teddy was in studio work most of the time, as a staff musician at New York's WNEW and later at CBS. He also taught annual summer classes on jazz piano improvisation at Juilliard. Since the 1956 Goodman movie, Teddy has made more club appearances, notably at the New York City Embers. Currently, he is using Bert Dahlander, the Swedish drummer, and bass man Arvell Shaw in his trio.

Although he has not taught for some time, Wilson remembers and is typically quick to praise some of his former students, particularly John Ferrincieli, who ''played stride piano against a modern type of right hand," and William Nalle, now in studio work. "I had some other very talented students, too, and I am talking about real piano players,” he said.

As might be expected from a two-handed pianist who understands that a piano is not a drum, a pianist whose work has been distinguished by superb finger control, a keen sense of dynamics, master legato playing, originality, love of melody, a compelling and resilient beat and a complete absence of gimmicks, Wilson does not think much of most contemporary jazz pianists.

"With few exceptions, what they play is a caricature of the piano," Teddy said. 'A caricature simply because of the way the piano is made. And pianists today all sound so much alike."

But Wilson, the schooled pianist, does not include Erroll Garner, who cannot read music, among the caricaturists. Teddy explained:

"Garner brought a great deal of originality to jazz piano, working with his time lag. His phrases come through with such conviction because they are his own. On the other hand, when you imitate another musician's way of playing and are too derivative, your phrases are not too clear, are just a shade vague, and they lack real conviction."

Wilson, also a critic of modern rhythm sections, said, "Drummers today play a continuous solo, from 9 'till 4. And I always thought a saxophonist like Parker would sound much better with a conventional rhythm section than with a hipster rhythm section. To my mind, if the background gets too complex, it kills the solo. I guess Dizzy and others like that kind of drummer and that kind of rhythm section, but I don't. To me, the Parker-like soloists would sound much better if they had simpler harmonic backgrounds; then their own harmonic thinking would come over far better."

Wilson said he believes the rhythm section deteriorated partly because of economic reasons. To obtain attention in a club and to make more money, a musician "wants to be in the foreground because that's where the money is," explained Teddy.

Wilson also said he feels that the development of records, ironically, has helped what he terms the "conformity" in jazz today.

"When I came up, there was a good deal of local influence," he said. "We would travel 30 miles or so to hear another musician who had his own way of playing. Musicians developed different approaches to music in different cities. But today the same jazz records are available and popular all over. They influence young musicians in New York, Atlanta, Paris, or Tuskegee, at the same time. All this tends for conformity."

Teddy and his attractive wife have two boys, Theodore, 12, and a chubby 9-monther, Steven. In his New York City apartment none of the many Down Beat, Esquire, and Metronome trophies Wilson has won as best pianist in past years is in evidence. He said he has no hobbies to speak of, although he collects piano records, mostly classical, and has a casual interest in sports cars (he reads Speed Age).

Teddy Wilson is a man quick to praise worthwhile innovations in music; originality is an essential part of jazz creation to him. Typically, he will praise Gillespie and Parker for their originality and at the same time say of Ruby Braff: "I admire Ruby for staying on his own, for not being swept up with Dizzy's style." Perhaps Wilson's point of view concerning jazz today is best summed up with this offhand remark:

"You have creative people and you have imitative people, and in a period of conformity, as today, there are more imitative people."

In late January, Wilson plans to take a six-piece group with a girl singer to England. Teddy finds the jazz audience in England and Scandinavia, where he has toured in the past, "very appreciative."

What does he think generally of the music business today?

"I do feel that music has got to come back," he said.”

Lighthouse All-Stars: Live In The Solo Spotlight

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

By the end of 1952 Howard Rumsey had transformed a small local bar in Hermosa Beach, California into a name known around the world. The Lighthouse became the centerpiece of the West Coast Jazz scene and the Lighthouse All-Stars became international jazz celebrities. Situated just a few yards from the beach with the cool ocean breeze and the smell of salt water in the air, it was the picture perfect setting for what would become known as "West Coast Jazz." But that wasn't always the case.

In 1949 when Howard first came upon the Lighthouse there wasn't anything about it that would foresee its future success. It was small and dingy, primarily catering to a rough merchant seaman crowd and it was close to going out of business.

Howard suggested to owner John Levine that he try putting on a Jazz jam session on Sunday afternoons. The Lighthouse had been having live music with a variety of local musicians but it hadn't made much of an impact, plus in 1949 it was universally accepted that Sunday was the worst day of the week for the liquor business.

Luckily, Levine was a gambler and figured he didn't have anything to lose at that point, so on May 29,1949. Howard presented his first Sunday session at the Lighthouse and recalled "We propped open the doors and started blasting and within an hour we had more people in the place than Levine had seen all week."

The success of that first Sunday established the weekly Sunday Jam Session policy and became a tradition that helped catapult the Lighthouse into its role as the center of West Coast Jazz.

Over the next couple of years Howard was able to replace the merchant seaman crowd with college age kids coming in off the beach to hear the live jazz and Sundays continued to be the featured attraction. The sessions started in the afternoon and ran until 2 in the morning. The Lighthouse All-Stars served as the core group with different guest musicians sitting in each week. The guest artists ran the gamut from local up and coming artists to established stars including big name out of town visitors.

Fortunately for fans of Jazz on the West Coast and for posterity, Bob Andrews and Donald Dean, two local Jazz devotees, frequented the Lighthouse with their tape recorders and some of what they recorded has been issued on CD under the auspices of the Los Angeles Jazz Institute headed up by Ken Poston.

The sound quality varies from track to track and while not professional recordings they are extremely important historical documents of those Sundays in Hermosa Beach. All of the recordings are previously unissued. You can locate more information about the LA Jazz Institute and its CD reissue program by visiting its website at: www.lajazzinstitute.org.

The audio for the following video features Maid in Mexico one such Sunday Jam Session track which was recorded on 9/13/1953 by Chet Baker(tp), Rolf Ericsson(tp), Bud Shank(as), Jimmy Giuffre(ts), Russ Freeman(p), Howard Rumsey(b) Max Roach (dr). Solo Order: Giuffre, Baker, Shank, Ericson, and Freeman.

This recording took place during the infamous "Crazy Sunday" and is one of the tunes played that day that has remained unissued until this point. Crazy Sunday is often remembered because of the presence of both Miles Davis and Chet Baker and the fact that an almost bewildering number of musicians showed up at the club that day.

Bbut it also marked the debut of the "new" Lighthouse All-Stars which included Bud Shank, Bob Cooper (there since the early days but now a regular), Rolf Ericsson, Claude Williamson and Max Roach. Maid In Mexico features the new All-Stars with three guests: Chet Baker, Jimmy Giuffre (no longer a regular) and Russ Freeman.

Milt Jackson 1923-1999: A Tribute