Lambert Hendricks Ross – Everybody’s LHR

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

It never ceased to amaze me then - and it continues to amaze me now - how many people, who know very little, if nothing, about Jazz are familiar with the vocal group -  Lambert Hendricks Ross.

Either they or their college roommate had one of LHR’s albums, or their parents had all of the albums or they just memorized some of the vocalese lyrics that Jon Hendricks wrote for the group so that they could sound hip and cool to their friends.

The latter skill is particularly remarkable when you consider that Jon wrote these hip lyrics to accompany the actual Jazz solos that were played on certain classic Jazz recordings and did not base them on the melodies of these songs.

In essence, people who couldn’t put two notes together were able to sing some of the hippest Jazz solos ever recorded thanks to their admiration for Jon’s skills with vocalese, which considering the level of humor, wit and sage philosophy that he brought to the form, he practically re-invented.

The group was only together for a few years and recorded relatively few albums, but when you consider the vocal talent on display and the brilliant lyrics which were applied to some of the most memorable solos ever recorded, there is nothing else like LHR in the history of Jazz.

And while I was familiar with Dave Lambert and Annie Ross as individual vocalists I knew virtually nothing about Jon Hendricks or how LHR came into existence, that is, until the September 1959 edition of Down beat magazine arrived in my mailbox and I found this article by Gene Lees.

It features Jon’s history of the LHR using the too-hip-for-the-room style that he employs in his rhyming vocalese lyrics.

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

“EDITORS NOTE – In the wee small hours of a morning at Newport this year [1959], I told Jon Hendricks that DownBeat would like to do a story on the LHR group. "Why not let me write it?" Jon said. I hedged and hesitated for a moment (perhaps Jon will remember it) and then began running some of his remarkable LHR lyrics over in my mind. "OK," I said.

We kicked the idea around a bit, notably backstage at Chicago's Regal The­ater, and I learned that Jon was thinking of doing the article in rhyme, no less. I shook my head a bit, reassured myself that his tremendous taste and talent would not fail, even in the unfamiliar task of writing an article, swallowed hard and said: "Wild."

Jon telephoned from time to time as he worked on the article. I began to get nerv­ous. Deadline was approaching, and I had already scheduled the cover photo to go with the article. "You have to promise me you won't change a thing," Jon said. That made me more nervous.

When the piece at last arrived—right on deadline—I scanned it, still nervously at first, then less nervously, and finally, jubi­lantly. It was—and is—one of the strangest articles I've ever read. As promised, it rhymed. Not unexpectedly, it sounded like an LHR lyric without the music. It also had in places the delightful flavor of an Ogden Nash poem. And finally, I guessed that some astute reader would look at its last line and think of James Joyce's Finnegan's Wake.

Jon didn't say this in the article, but he has done a lot of thinking about the possi­bilities of true jazz opera. The article tends to validate his theory that it can—and should—be done.

Lambert, Hendricks and Ross is one of the most remarkable groups in jazz today. With their vocals on famous instru­mental numbers, they have broken up audiences at every jazz festival they have played this summer—and they have played most of them, with more yet to come, including Monterey. Where their jazz-vocals experiment will lead is something no one, including Jon, pretends to be able to predict with certainty. All that anyone knows for sure is that their popularity is huge and growing, that they deserve it and that the end is not in sight.

In the meantime, here is Jon Hen­dricks' story on LHR. As Dave Lambert said to me, explaining why when he worked on construction he liked to use jackhammers, "I dug it." I hope you will, too. —Ed.”

© -  Jon Hendricks, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“As to dates, times, names and places,

My accuracy ain't apt to be too outstand­ing. Data's too demanding. I haven't the faintest idea on what date Dave Lambert's birthday occurs, and experience with women and the subject of age gives me bet­ter sense than to ask Annie Ross hers, so, on biographical data I won't be too factual. However, on matters of the heart and soul I hope to be very actual, 'cause if you're gonna know how Dave Lambert, Annie Ross and I have such a collective ball while singing our individual parts, you'll have to know that it comes from what we fondly recall, and what is in our hearts.

Some people say our name is a clumsy name for a singing group to be stuck with. They compare it to Merrill, Lynch, Pierce, Fenner and Smith, an overstatement, by far. Actually we call ourselves Lambert, Hendricks and Ross for no other reason than that's who we are! And so that your understanding of our name will gain even more clearance, if you dig what I mean, our name describes the order of our appearance on the scene.

Dave Lambert, ex-everything under the sun and musical truth-seeker, came home from high school in New England one day, heard a Count Basie record on an out­side downtown radio-shop-loudspeaker on the way, and the amazement that there could be such a feelin' never left him after that. When I engaged Dave to do the vocal adaptation of Jimmy Giuffre's "Four Broth­ers" arrangement, he bent my ear about doing a lyricised Basie album in nothin' flat! While we were rehearsing "Four Brothers," or listening to what each other was sayin', Dave made sure some Basie records were playin'. He'd play the old things most, the "good ol' ones" we both grew up listening to, and again we heard the marvel of them all. In this era of "conservatories," we heard the old Basie band full of natural musicians from their heart play more jazz than any­body we've ever heard, no matter how smart. And nary one of 'em knew what the inside of a music school looked like. They just played and had a ball.

Finally I got Dave's subtle message (as subtle as a ton of coal on the head) and stopped listening casually and got t' writ­ing lyrics instead. I soon had words to "Down for the Count" and "Blues Back­stage" and Dave adapted Frank Foster's arrangements for voices, then we started making choices of recording company A&R men. (Means "artist and repertory" and they're to blame if the recording out­put sounds a bit gory. Their judgment of a “hit” often depends on how much a new tune sounds like the last “hit.” They often are unable to see any future in a tune because of a single-minded preoccupation with a past hit!)

Creed Taylor of ABC-Paramount is a rarity among his kind. He has his own taste and uses his own mind. I’m happy to state.

During the time we were working on Sing A Song of Basie for Creed, I lived and wrote in Greenwich Village, which I had always thought of in an artistic way, but which I found retaining only an artistic façade, masking pseudo-intellectual morbidness ‘midst moral decay.  It may be a good place to stay up late in, but its new, thrill-seeking Freud-spouting population has rendered it no longer a desirable place to create in. (Don’t blame DownBeat, this is my personal contention—just a little something I thought I'd mention.)

For our first date, Dave contracted 12 experienced singers he had known and used before as the Dave Lambert Singers, some of whom worked on such programs as The Perry Como Show and Your Hit Parade, and who had reputations some­thing fierce. We also had the Basie rhythm section, Freddy Greene, Sonny Payne and Eddie Jones, with Nat Pierce.

It was during this first date that the spiritual quality that is in all jazz, and prominently so in Basie, made itself mani­fest; that spiritual quality we—and Ray Charles—got in church, and got so West Coast cool we left in the lurch and got back to for 30 pieces of Horace Silver, after a long, cold search.

Those singers had music and lyrics, but that spiritual quality was missing at the very first test, even though they tried their best. Eddie Jones saw and heard and laid his fiddle gently down and walked amongst them and talked to them and spread the word, and Sonny Payne and Nat Pierce did, too. Freddie sat placidly by and regarded it all with an ever-patient eye and didn't move to get his message through, just sat calm, like he usually do. What Eddie Jones told those singers about "layin' back, but not slowin' down" was beautifully true, but when all the gentle urging was done there was no concealing that those well-trained singers still couldn't sing Basie with that spiritual feeling— except one—a silent, beautiful red-haired girl Dave had introduced me to several days before at Bob Bach's house in Wash­ington Mews, a name I remembered from then-current theatrical news as starring in an imported-from-London Broadway review called Cranks. But I remembered more; five years or so earlier than then—a Prestige record given me by Teacho Wilt­shire, who recorded "Four Brothers" vocal­ly first, a record of a vocal version of Wardell Gray's "Twisted," excellent lyric by Annie Ross—better than good—boss!

Yes, Annie Ross has that feeling, that feeling you can't learn in no school, that feel­ing that the men in the old Basie band had from birth and got together in nightclubs and tent shows. And don't get the idea schools, to them, are unknown, 'cause those men started a few schools of their own! Pick a tenor player at random and, no matter what he says, chances are, at one time or another he studied under Pres. And make no bones about it—Jo Jones invented the sock cymbal, and don't ever doubt about it.

Philly Joe know.

And every trumpet player ever plays through a "bucket" mute oughta know that Buck Clayton's real nickname ain't Buck—it's "Bucket!" (Ain't that cute.)

At any rate, the first Sing a Song of Basie was scrapped and, thanks to Creed Taylor, we got another chance—but what to do? Dave Lambert knew. Dave has a tal­ent for putting very large possibilities into a very few words. "Annie feels it," he said. "Let's you, me 'n Annie do it." Coming from anyone else I'd have thought such an idea was for the birds, because of the hard work entailed, but I soon saw the beauty of Dave's suggestion, especially if we all three really wailed.

From the time we started out, Annie knew what she was about. She did every­thing with ease and a naturalness found only in great artists, I guess. Annie Ross is more than just a singer, to say the least. She is an artiste. Every night, on "Avenue C," she stands up there between Dave and me and hits that last note, F above high C, as though it were any note—and it might as well be! I remember when Dave asked her if she could make that note and she said, "No, never," so Dave said he'd change it, winked at me and left it like it was, and Annie sings it like she's been singing it forever.

So we did Sing a Song of Basie alone, Dave, Annie, the Basie rhythm section with Nat Pierce, and me, and the rest is known. When people would congratulate us on our artistic success, it got to be an un­funny joke, cause Dave and I stayed broke. Annie was straight. She was singing on the Patrice Munsel Show, which is like a per­manent record date. Then, one day at Dave's house, I saw the strangest sight I've ever seen: Sing a Song of Basie showed up in DownBeat as number thirteen! So Dave and I decided to see if we could get some gigs—just local. We envisioned nothing on a grand scale for an act so unusually vocal. Annie was in Europe then, sendin' mes­sages that everything was dandy, so 'til Annie got back we worked with Flo Handy, wife of George Handy and singer of great skill, and the Great South Bay Jazz Festival put us on last year's bill.

Later, the MJQ's manager, Monte Kay, set us up an audition with Willard Alexan­der one day. Willard got so excited he made us wonder what we had! We weren't all that sure it was good, but when you knock somebody out like Willard Alexander, you know it ain't all bad. Annie came back from Europe and joined Dave and me, and Willard signed us immediately.

As to how Basie feels about us, that'll be easy to understand, 'cause he invited us to do an album with his band, yet! (Sing Along with Basie, on Roulette.) Our cur­rent album, to be specific, is The Swingers on Dick Bock's World Pacific, with Zoot Sims, Russ Freeman and Basie's steady three men, Eddie Jones, Sonny Payne and Freddie Greene, the finest rhythm section anybody's ever seen.

We've just been honored by being asked to sign with Columbia Records, under the aegis of Mr. Irving Townsend. "Moanin'," by the pianist with Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, Bobby Timmons, and "Cloudburst," a Sam-the-Man Taylor saxophone solo, are about ready for single release, and there's an album of Ellingtonia in the works, so who knows where it will cease?

My brother, Jim Hendricks, manages to manage us—an unmanageable task, and as for how we feel about what's happened to us—need you ask? How far Lambert, Hendricks and Ross will go is something I don't pretend to know, but, since I write a lot of the words we sing, I can tell you what message I'll bring: that opera houses dedi­cated to European musical culture are not the American norm. Jazz is America's cul­tural art form. To say that our opera hous­es are the Chicago, the San Francisco and the Metropolitan just doesn't follow. Amer­ica's real opera houses—as one day, pray, the American people may realize—are the Howard Theater in Washington, D.C., the Regal Theater in Chicago and Harlem's Apollo. And our divas are not singers of the kind of music Europe has, but Billie, and Ella, and Sarah, and they sing jazz!

We are honored anew every time a jazz musician compliments us, because we know they know what it's all about, but to have three great jazz musicians accompany us is something about which to shout. We have the Ike Isaacs Trio—Gildo Mahones, piano; Kahlil Madi, drums; and Ike on bass—and we hope to take them with us every place.

As for me—I'm the ninth child and the seventh son of Rev. and Mrs. A.B. Hen­dricks. I have eleven brothers and three sis­ters, all reared in the African Episcopal Church around Toledo, Ohio. All other data can be found in my bio. My musical educa­tion consisted of singing Negro spirituals and hymns with my mother in church, singing in bars and grills for whatever people threw me, which, praise be, was never out, singing in nightclubs at thirteen (they used to bill me as "The Sepia Bobby Breen!"), accompanied for one magical spell by a local pianist whose family were our neighbors, whom we knew well—Art Tatum, who started on the violin, but sat down to the piano and never got up again. I was fortunate enough to have learned to lis­ten to him early and I'm glad I paid heed, 'cause I never did learn how to read.

When Bird came through Toledo one night with Max, Tommy Potter (now with "Sweets"), Kenny Dorham and Al Haig to play a dance, I got a long-awaited, unex­pected chance to scat a few choruses, after which, while Kenny Dorham blew, I start­ed to split, but Bird motioned me to Kenny's chair next to him and said, with that warm smile, "Sit awhile." I ended up scatting the whole set, and before they left, Bird said, "Look me up when you get to New York. Don't forget."

It was two years later when I got to New York. Bird was playing at the Apollo Bar uptown, and I got up there fast as any­one can. And when I walked past the band­stand, Bird waved at me and spoke my name and thrilled me to kingdom come when he said, "Wanna' sing some?" and two years passed away as though it had been only one day! Roy Haynes was playing drums and I was a drummer (who had just put his drums in pawn), but when I heard Roy with Bird I said to myself, "That's it for my drumming. Them days is gone!"

I knew nothing about the New York scene except what I'd seen or heard, so I decided to judge everybody by "who stood up with Bird," or, if they didn't ever share the same bandstand, how did they stand with the man. Dave Lambert did "Old Folks" and "In the Still of the Night" with Bird, vocal arrangements by Dave, musical arrangements by Gil Evans, among the more beautiful things I've ever heard. Annie Ross sang with Bird a few times. The fact I'm trying not to keep it hid is that, at one time or another, all three of us did. It's a coincidence with a spiritual qual­ity I can't name, but Dave Lambert, Annie Ross and I came together naturally, just at the time when jazz began to receive wide public acclaim.

As a writer of words, this gives me a great responsibility, especially to American youth: Tell the truth! Interpret the compo­sitions and jazz composers, writing today, not three hundred years passed away. And the composers are numerous, most everybody playing, and all I have to do is tell the people what they’re saying.”

If your not familiar with Lambert Hendricks Ross, you’ll find the music on the following video tribute to them to be a real treat. If you already a fan, then you may enjoy reacquainting yourself with some old friends. The music of LHR is one of Jazz’s great gifts to the world. 

Buddy DeFranco and Dave McKenna: Two for the Recording Studio

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

Along with the trumpet, the clarinet was the preeminent instrument of the Swing Era when some of the era's most popular bands were led by the likes of Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw and Woody Herman.

While the trumpet persisted as a featured instrument in the smaller combos that brought Bebop and Modern Jazz to the forefront in the years following the end of the Second World War, the clarinet seemed to recede into Jazz History.

The exceptional playing of Buddy DeFranco brought the devilishly-difficult-to-play clarinet into the world of Bebop and beyond with a degree of skill rarely rivaled by other modern, Jazz instrumentalists.

Each and every time I return to Buddy DeFranco's music, I shake my head in amazement at his superb technique and consistently innovative improvisation. 

Although rarely recognized as such, Buddy's achievements rival those of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, the two principal originators of Bebop. His skill and ideas never fail to impress me, whatever the setting.

“Nobody has seriously challenged DeFranco's status as the greatest post-swing clarinetist, although the instrument's desertion by reed players has tended to disenfranchise its few exponents (and Tony Scott might have a say in the argument too). DeFranco's incredibly smooth phrasing and seemingly effortless command are unfailingly impressive on all his records. But the challenge of translating this virtuosity into a relevant post-bop environment hasn't been easy, and he has relatively few records to account for literally decades of fine work….”

“Dave McKenna hulks over the keyboard…. He is one of the most dominant mainstream players on the scene, with an immense reach and an extraordinary two-handed style which distributes theme statements across the width of the piano.

McKenna is that rare phenomenon, a pianist who actually sounds better on his own. Though he is sensitive and responsive in group playing … he has quite enough to say on his own account not to need anyone else to hold his jacket.”

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

In the 100+ years that Jazz has been in existence, it has been expressed in any number of instrumental combinations: combos, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, octets, tentets and big bands.

It almost seems that as the popularity, and with it, the fortunes of the music, waned, the smaller the groupings became.

The big bands of the Swing Era were replaced by combos after WW II and these would soon be reduced to piano-bass-drum trios. Sometimes locally-based trios served as pick-up rhythm sections for horn players who traveled the Jazz club circuit of major cities as guest soloists. It was cheaper for them to get booked into local clubs this way.  Star alto/tenor saxophonist Sonny Stitt made his living this way for many years.

Throughout its history, Jazz has had a long association with night clubs many of whose owners were looking to pedal booze with the music serving as a convenient backdrop.

Jazz nightspots like The Lighthouse and Shelly’s Manne Hole in southern California, The Blackhawk in San Francisco, the Jazz Showcase in Chicago and Birdland and The Village Vanguard, all of which featured the music as well as sold libations, have become few and far between since their heyday from 1945-65.

Not that these smoke-filled rooms were ever the best environment for the music let alone the musicians, but at least they gave Jazz fans venues in which to hear the music performed on a regular basis.

Duos have always been around the Jazz scene, but they were generally formed by a pianist or a guitarist backed by a bass player, in other words, an instrument to carry the melody while the other played rhythm to keep the swinging sense of metronomic time which is a key feature of Jazz.

This low-key approach was generally favored by some of the smaller rooms that offered Jazz and was usually easy on the wallet of the club’s owner. Adding horns and drums to such an environment would overpower the patrons.

Not surprisingly, with the passing of time and the diminishing of its fans base, Jazz solo piano gigs also became ensconced in some clubs. Occasionally, a guitarist, or a trumpet player with a mute or even a saxophonist who could keep the volume down might drop by to sit-in with these solo pianists.

For many years, one of the best pianists in Jazz was a frequent performer as a solo pianist in clubs in the greater Boston area with occasional swings down to Newport, R.I. and to Florida for “the season.”

His name was Dave McKenna [1930-2008] and he always maintained that, “[ … because of his fondness for staying close to the melody], I’m not really a bona fide jazz guy”. Instead, he claimed, “I’m just a saloon piano player.” Regulars at the Boston’s Copley Plaza Bar (now the Oak Room), where Dave often performed, rebuffed this modest remark by telling McKenna that he was ‘just a saloon player’ like Billie Holiday was ‘just a saloon singer.’” 

Thanks to the late Carl Jefferson’s patronage, many lesser known, but not necessarily less-skillful, solo pianists would have their work showcased on his Concord Records Maybeck Recital Hall [Berkeley, CA] series which was issued in the 1980s and 1990s.

Concord also put out recordings with some of these pianists represented on the Maybeck series paired with woodwind and reed players such as Alan Broadbent and Gary Foster, Kenny Werner and Chris Potter, and my favorite, Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco.

Richard Cook and Brian Morton of The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6^th Ed. had this to say about the DeFranco-McKenna collaboration:

“Concord threw a line to players of DeFranco's sensibilities. The one to get … is the magisterial encounter with Dave McKenna, still as fiercely full-blooded as ever at the keyboard, and musician enough to have DeFranco working at his top level. 'Poor Butterfly', 'The Song Is You' and 'Invitation' are worth the admission price, and there are seven others.”

Here’s what Dr. Herb Wong had to say about the DeFranco-McKenna Jazz alliance in his insert notes to Dave McKenna and Buddy deFranco: You Must Believe in Swing [Concord CCD-4756-2].

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

“Though rare up until some 25 years ago, duos now occupy a pivotal niche in jazz. Their interest stretches beyond mere curiosity; two-instrument bands face the challenge of creating musical moments germane to their special environment which neither solo musicians nor conventional small combos can furnish.

Most duos highlight the beauty of musicians of similar styles and schools of thought playing with a preferred consonant sound. On the surface, therefore, the pairing of Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco might seem unlikely. "At first thought, Dave and Buddy may not be a perfect fit, since they come from somewhat different directions," recalls Dr. Dave Seiler, Director of the University of New Hampshire Jazz Band. "But we watched them rehearse - the way they communicated was incredible!"

The background trail leading to this unusual pairing is of interest. Born in the vision of one Joe Stellmach, a devout fan and good friend of both McKenna and DeFranco, this recording was inspired by the spectacular match-ups of DeFranco with super piano icons Art Tatum and Oscar Peterson back in the 1950s. The prospect of DeFranco's thorough mastery of the instrument (with his modern harmonic vocabulary and improvisational skills) brought together with the extraordinary pianism of McKenna (one of the most triumphant post-Tatum pianists) was Stellmach's dream.

"I was inspired to bring Dave and Buddy together - specifically Dave as the third prodigious jazz pianist to be coupled with Buddy," said Stellmach, who was the catalyst in gaining the enthusiasm of Concord Jazz to make this recording. Less than a week after the teaming was agreed to, a debut concert was organized by local piano great Tom Gallant and the aformentioned Dr. Seiler for October 9, 1996 at Portsmouth, New Hampshire as part of the Harry W. Jones, Jr. Jazz Concert. Prior to this venue, McKenna and DeFranco hadn't really played together other than brief jams at parties. A week later, they were in New York recording this CD.

DeFranco's esteem for McKenna is markedly illustrated by this anecdote: "Two summer ago in New England, a friend of Dave's asked me if I'd like to go hear him play solo in a hotel by the coast. I had a plane to catch later on, so I decided to catch one set and then fly home. I wound up listening to the entire three sets."

McKenna is an anomaly in the world of jazz pianists; his two-handed style is so rhythmically powerful that he's essentially self-sufficient. Ace trombonist Carl Fontana, who has played with McKenna many times, simply said, "Dave is a band. You don't really need one when he's around!" Pianist Dick Hyman agrees, "He's his own rhythm section. The left hand plays a 4/4 bass line, the right hand plays the melody, and there's that occasional 'strum' in between - like three hands." Check his right hand off-beat single notes, and unpredictable spaces promoting accents that create ear-tugging reactions. Reminiscent of Tatum, McKenna's arpeggios at times seem like they're 50 feet long.

"Dave plays a different way - an orchestral way," DeFranco elaborates. "Of course, Errol Garner and Oscar Peterson had it too, but Dave has a bass line going on all the time. He has the orchestral melodic part, and those exciting chord progressions, but somewhere he sneaks in what might be 'brass figures,' and it's fascinating to wonder how he gets them in. He inserts these figures while everything else is going on."

McKenna explains it quite simply: "I like to play a long line - like a horn player's single notes, which also equate to single notes on a bass. Well, sometimes I'll pause - take a breather in that line, and on occasion just throw in a chord or two." His predilection for single note lines suggests that he has listened a great deal more to horn players than he has to pianists.

Buddy DeFranco is the titan of the modern jazz clarinet who had taken his instrument to the peak of mastery decades ago and has maintained this preeminence internationally since the forties. He has pushed his digital precision to its technical boundaries, and early on merged his blazing, flawless execution with the vital force of Charlie Parker's harmonic approach. With his devastating speed and gorgeous, fluid tone, he improvises with emotional candor and blows nuclear ideas that explode with surprising hues and shapes.

An accomplished clarinetist himself, Seiler says simply "Buddy is a clarinet player's clarinet player." …

Speaking about DeFranco, McKenna said firmly, "It was a real pleasure working with him. Man, he's got it all! In a duo you have to be busy all the time. It's one of the hardest things to do, but with a great horn player like Buddy - that's something else! I really enjoy his musicality."

In a duo, each musician is truly half of what happens. It's a matter of the freedom to express and letting things happen with complete confidence — a process which shows the music is worthy of risk. There's an enchanting aura about the numeral "two". This duo reflects that mystifying magnificence. There is something pristine about combining a piano note and a clarinet note. Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco share in tandem a striking set of properties of integrity and musical character only mature creative players experience. Their sophisticated knowledge and simpatico are self-evident.

DeFranco said it well: "If it doesn't swing, it isn't happening!"

You can savor the duo delight that is Dave McKenna and Buddy DeFranco in the following video tribute which features their performance of Tadd Dameron’s If You Could See Me Now. 

Albert Murray - "Stomping The Blues" - 40th Anniversary Edition

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

"Murray is possessed of the poet's language, the novelist's sensibility, the essayist's clarity, the jazzman's imagination, the gospel singer's depth of feeling."

—The New Yorker

"Beautifully illustrated with vivid period photos, LP covers, and broadsides of black jazz icons, Stomping the Blues represents the zenith of Murray's writing on the subject."

— Rolling Stone

"One fine lyrical history of the music. Murray demonstrates the central role of blues/jazz in American culture, telling us about the nature of our past, present and future: which of course is exactly what the blues is."

—San Francisco Review of Books

"A flamboyant, insightful examination and evocation of the sources, styles, and mythologies of blues music."

—Newsweek

Jonathan Haidt is a NYU professor of social psychology who specializes in morality and moral emotions.

On November 15th he delivered the 2017 Wriston Lecture to the Manhattan Institute under the title -  “The Age of Outrage: What It’s Doing to Our Universities and Our Country.”

Professor Haidt began his lecture by observing:

“Today’s identity politics . . . teaches the exact opposite of what we think a liberal arts education should be. When I was at Yale in the 1980s, I was given so many tools for understanding the world.

By the time I graduated, I could think about things as a utilitarian or as a Kantian, as a Freudian or a behaviorist, as a computer scientist or as a humanist. I was given many lenses to apply to any given question or problem.

But what do we do now? Many students are given just one lens—power. Here’s your lens, kid. Look at everything through this lens. Everything is about power. Every situation is analyzed in terms of the bad people acting to preserve their power and privilege over the good people.

This is not an education. This is induction into a cult. It’s a fundamentalist religion. It’s a paranoid worldview that separates people from each other and sends them down the road to alienation, anxiety and intellectual impotence.”

In recent years, Jazz, too, has been afflicted by the Cult of the Single Lens which preaches that Jazz was created by Black musicians and appropriated by White musicians. Some go as far as saying that Jazz as a Black Art was stolen by White impersonators.

Those who hold this viewpoint have promulgated a distorted version of the facts that was shaped by ideas that were ideological before they were musical.

But to many scholars, it is beyond dispute that white musicians have been an integral force in jazz from its earliest days. Above all, they maintain that the idea of Jazz as an exclusively black cultural preserve does not stand up to close scrutiny.

Such matters have been loudly argued, even fought over, and doubtless will continue to be hot subjects for some time to come.

More relevant is the question of the music: Does any evidence support the idea of identifiable "black" and "white" styles? Did it ever?

As Richard Sudhalter points out in his seminal Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945:

“In the early years of Jazz’s evolution, particularly in the 1920s and '30s, there were differences. They came about chiefly because musicians of different races were separated in their day-to-day and professional lives. And it was separately that black and white musicians grappled with the same problems of rhythm, harmony, melodic construction, interaction.

Some of his more extreme views may make Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones) an unlikely source of valuable insight into such matters. Yet he seems right on target when he remarks, in Blues People: Negro Music in White America:

“Jazz as played by white musicians was not the same as that played by black musicians, nor was there any reason for it to be. The music of the white jazz musicians did not issue from the same cultural circumstances.”

In the context of the early years, the distinction is important. Differences in upbringing, environment, and musical training left white jazzmen (especially those who had little personal contact with black culture and its traditions) more likely to intellectualize, emphasizing matters of harmony and structure.

Performances by black ensembles, above all those of the South and Southwest, possessed, in general, a degree of rhythmic freedom, personal interaction, and often a blues feeling and melodic vocabulary rarely found in music by corresponding white bands. Again, Baraka gets it right:

“The white musicians understood the blues first as music, but seldom as an attitude, since the attitude, or world-view, the white musician was responsible to was necessarily quite a different one.”

But, along with other scholars who follow this line of reasoning, he fails to account for those many major black Jazzmen who feel, and display, little or no affinity for the blues and its "attitude." The exceptions they present, in their very numbers, are a counterargument, which cannot be explained, as Baraka tries to do, only as a matter of "Negroes trying to pretend that they had issued from [white] culture."

More likely, it seems, is an interpretation suggesting that mastery of what came to be called Jazz was not a matter of racial or genetic affinity (always a dangerous hypothesis) but of choice.”

As has been widely demonstrated in Richard Sudhalter’s Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contribution to Jazz, 1915-1945, Jazzmen of the pre-World War II decades, black and white, paid careful attention to each other's work, and that the degree to which such mutuality affected individuals varied immensely.

As he states: “Beginning in the 1920’s, individual musicians and ensembles made choices based on what they liked, even admired, incorporating the results in their emergent solo styles. Choice, above all, quickly became the determinant of what and how a man played, how he constructed and developed a solo, addressed the beat. In this context, as noted earlier, certain traits — tendencies and attitudes — can be identified as "white" and "black" contributions to the mix.”

One such “choice” or to revert back to Professor Haidt’s use of the term “lens” is the use of The Blues as a basis for a musician’s approach to Jazz.

[“I was given many lenses to apply to any given question or problem.”]

And since it was first published in 1977, there has been no better description of how Jazzmen who chose The Blues as a lens through which to solve the problems of rhythm, harmony, melodic construction, and interaction needed to play Jazz at the highest levels than Albert Murray’s Stomping The Blues.

If you missed its original publication, the University of Minnesota Press is currently offering a 40th anniversary paperback edition with a new introduction by Murray-scholar, Paul Devlin.

The following from a University of Minnesota media release is very accurate concerning the tone and tenor of Murray’s landmark study of the blues and its relationship to Jazz:

In this classic work of American music writing, renowned critic Albert Murray argues beautifully and authoritatively that "the blues as such are synonymous with low spirits. Not only is its express purpose to make people feel good, which is to say in high spirits, but in the process of doing so it is actually expected to generate a disposition that is both elegantly playful and heroic in its nonchalance."

In Stomping the Blues Murray explores its history, influences, development, and meaning as only he can. More than two hundred vintage photographs capture the ambiance Murray evokes in lyrical prose. Only the sounds are missing from this lyrical, sensual tribute to the blues.”

To carry Professor Haidt’s lens analogy one step further, a reading of Albert Murray’s Stomping the Blues will certainly provide the reader with some clearer views to understand these assertions from Amiri Baraka (a.k.a. Leroi Jones) in Blues People: Negro Music in White America:

“Jazz as played by white musicians was not the same as that played by black musicians, nor was there any reason for it to be. The music of the white jazz musicians did not issue from the same cultural circumstances.”

“The white musicians understood the blues first as music, but seldom as an attitude, since the attitude, or world-view, the white musician was responsible to was necessarily quite a different one.”

It’s one thing to say The Blues, but it’s quite another to understand what is meant by it.

Since it publication 40 years ago, Stomping the Blues has been influential in a number of ways as is detailed in Paul Devlin’s new introduction to the 40th anniversary edition.

Perhaps one of the most helpful insights about what Mr. Murray means by The Blues is contained in the opening paragraph of Mr. Devlin’s Introduction:

"’For Paul, Some fundamentals.’ That is how Albert Murray inscribed my copy of Stomping the Blues. Here is one of his most fundamental points: "You don't stomp the blues like this [pounds fist on table] — you stomp the blues like this [snaps with panache on the afterbeat]." Murray used this example all the time in interviews and on panels in order to illustrate that the blues is "stomped" with elegance, not force; with technique, not power; with joie de vivre, not rage.”

Mr. Devlin’s Introduction also contains many other perceptive and penetrating observations about the book that will help the reader gain a fuller appreciation of its significance. For example, Mr. Murray tells us that:

“Blues music has always been good-time music; its function has been the exorcism of despair."

Mr. Devlin parallel’s this with the work of Andre Malraux when he explains:

“To an extent, this is an application of Andre’ Malraux's argument about the workings of the artistic process: that art, primarily, is a response to art, as explained in his book The Voices of Silence (1953), a monumental, profound, and idiosyncratic analysis of the visual arts that Murray studied for decades, and a work not unlike Stomping the Blues in several ways: poetic, written by a learned critic, yet not shackled by the conventions developed or expected by academic or journalistic critics of the form in question, slow and methodical to start, and difficult to put down once it starts swinging.

Another point Murray considered fundamental was his reorientation of how blues relates to jazz: as a matter of the level of orchestration. Indeed, he argues that the process by which pop tunes and show tunes are recomposed as jazz tunes is "precisely" the process by which the folk blues was extended, elaborated, and refined into jazz. Stomping the Blues is fundamental to his vision of existence and a lens through which to view other aspects of culture. …  It expounds a vision of and for life …  Stomping the Blues endures year after year, enthralling readers new and old while provoking debate.”

In a brief synopsis, Mr. Devlin also details the storied, earlier publication history of Stomping the Blues:

“Stomping the Blues was published by McGraw-Hill in November 1976 and was celebrated with a midday "Kansas City Jam Session" in the publisher's landmark headquarters in midtown Manhattan, featuring jazz giants Mary Lou Williams, Budd Johnson, Buck Clayton, Eddie Durham, Oliver Jackson, Bill Pemberton, and Doc Cheatham. What an auspicious beginning: an artist saluted by artists he salutes. Stomping the Blues went on to win ASCAP's Deems Taylor Award for music criticism in 1977. A British edition was published in 1978, and subsequent American editions in 1982, 1989, and 2000. In 2016 it was included in the Library of America's edition of Murray's essays and memoirs ….”

Mr. Devlin offers a broader context as well in which to appreciate the influence and effect of Stomping the Blues as its relates to other of Mr. Murray’s writings, all of which have been published by the University of Minnesota Press, when he notes that:

This edition is a result of a collaboration that began in mid-2009 when I pitched what became Rifftide: The Life and Opinions of Papa Jo Jones as told to Albert Murray, to the University of Minnesota Press [2011]. Since then, working with Murray's literary executor, Lewis P. Jones in, Minnesota has published Murray Talks Music; Albert Murray on Blues and Jazz (2016), a collection of Murray's previously uncollected or unpublished interviews and writings on music (edited by me), and a new edition of Good Morning Blues; The Autobiography of Count Basie as told to Albert Murray (2016), the fourth American edition. Murray Talks Music is a valuable companion to Stomping the Blues. These four books together tell an edifying story about American music and culture in the twentieth century: jazz and the blues as thought and lived; jazz and the blues in theory and practice. Stomping the Blues is the masterpiece that led to the other three….”

In the third and final section of his Introduction, Mr. Devlin offers these comments about the reception and influence of Stomping The Blues:

Stomping the Blues was reviewed extensively. Some of the smartest and most perceptive reviews include those by Gary Giddins in New York, John Edgar Wideman in The American Poetry Review, Robert Fleming in Freedomways, Bob Blumenthal in The Boston Phoenix, Stanley Dance in Jazz Journal, and Greil Marcus in Rolling Stone. ...

Many reviewers understood and appreciated what Murray was trying to do. A few years later Nelson George argued in the Village Voice in 1982 that it should be brought back into print and it soon was. George notes, perceptively, ‘the marvel of Stomping is that Murray manages to be both analytically detached and emotionally involved—criticism's most difficult parlay.’

By the early 1980s, and perhaps beginning with the review of the British edition in the Times Literary Supplement in 1978, a certain number of white jazz critics had started misinterpreting and exaggerating the caption on page 197, in which Murray refers to white jazz musicians as being part of the "third line." Third line does not mean third rate, as several critics have claimed or implied: it simply refers to a physical position in the old New Orleans parades, which Murray then used as a metaphor for closeness to idiomatic sources. ….

Stomping the Blues was probably the first work to articulate the connection between jazz, the blues, and locomotive onomatopoeia (or at least the first to do so cogently and comprehensively). Duke Ellington had been orchestrating stylized locomotives since the 1920s and Murray had been talking with Ellington about this since at least 1951 ….

Stomping the Blues had a marked influence on the development of Jazz at Lincoln Center, which Murray cofounded (see Murray Talks Music). The Preface to the Da Capo Press edition in 2000 frames the book in terms of that influence; it is the only previous dition to have an introductory essay. The Preface was written by Rob Gibson, a performing arts executive who was the first director of Jazz at Lincoln Center in 1991, and in 2000 was its executive producer and director….As of 2000, he writes that Stomping the Blues is a ‘preeminent source’ for people working in the jazz world and that Jazz at Lincoln Center has been able to embody ‘the many ideas that define this treatise.’

Aside from its place in the intellectual foundation of Jazz at Lincoln Center, Stomping the Blues has become a standard text in history of jazz courses, is a foundational text of the discipline of jazz studies, and has been quoted, cited, and discussed in dozens of books and academic articles….

But the reason to read Stomping the Blues today is not necessarily for its influence on Jazz at Lincoln Center, or on jazz studies as a discipline, or because the blues is central to the life of a random person on the street, or can elucidate a crucial response to modernity, but because following the movement of Murray's thought is a valuable experience in itself.  Yet the content of Stomping the Blues is accurate and can be the cornerstone of

an education in twentieth-century music. …”

Mr. Devlin sums up his Introduction with the following exhortation:

“So, if you're buying this book to replace a tattered copy from a history of jazz course, or if you are completing a Murray collection, or if you are discovering Murray for the first time, may it be your discovery of the year, and may rediscoveries be like new discoveries. Happy stomping.”

Paul Devlin

Long Island, New York

April 2017

I would also urge you to read Stomping the Blues because it will afford you with, from the perspective of Professor Haidt, another “ … tool for understanding the world,” -the Jazz World, that is.