For a short time in the late 1990’s before he moved to the other side of “The Bay” [San Francisco, of course, is there another one?], Orrin Keepnews and I were neighbors.
On a number of occasions, he graciously consented to meet me over a coffee at a local bistro and answer my many questions for a piece I was preparing on pianist and vibraphonist Victor Feldman. Victor had recorded for Riverside Records in the early 1960s when Orrin co-owned the label with Bill Grauer.
Orrin left a huge footprint on the Jazz landscape of the second half of the 20th century, one that extended into the first decade-and-a-half of the 21st as well. [He died on March 1, 2015 in El Cerrito, CA].]
I was humbled by the time this legendary impresario made available to a novice writer trying to put together a few words in tribute to his former friend and teacher.
I mean this guy literally launched the recording career of dozens of major modern Jazz musicians when he was the co-owner of Riverside Records, including the iconic pianist Bill Evans who was reluctant to even make his first recordings because he thought that “ he had nothing to say!” Thank goodness that Orrin convinced him otherwise.
Invariably, my talks with Orrin eventually turned to his relationship with pianist and composer Thelonious Monk. I say “invariably” because Orrin generally conducted the pace of our “talks” [He talked and I was smart enough to just listen.] and he always closed them with “Monk Musings” - his term.
From 1953 to 1959, Orrin recorded Monk in various settings and because of these sessions [30 in all], he succeeded in rescuing Thelonious from total obscurity and helping him on to “fame and fortune” - although how lasting either one of these were as far as Monk was concerned is pure conjecture.
The full story of Orrin’s relationship with Monk is detailed in Thelonious and Me by Orrin Keepnews, the opening essay in the booklet that accompanies the 15 CD boxed - Thelonious Monk: The Complete Riverside Recordings [RCD] 022-02 which garnered Grammy Awards upon in 1987 for Best Historical Album and Best Album Notes.
Central to the reason why Orrin felt so justifiably proud of his achievements on behalf of Monk and his music is the argument contained in the following excerpt from this essay.
“Over the years it has come to be my personal definition of the role of the jazz record producer that above all he should serve as a catalytic agent.In a literal sense, my dictionary refers to this as something that "initiates a chemical reaction and enables it to proceed under different conditions than otherwise possible." In a jazz sense, I mean that the producer's job is to create, in whatever ways he can, a set of circumstances that will allow and encourage the artist to perform at the very highest level. I first attempted to function in this way on my early sessions with Monk, and I do feel that at least some of the work I helped bring into being was truly different and lastingly valuable, and that without my involvement it might not have been quite the same.”
Of the many recordings that Orrin and Monk made together during their six year association, The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall [Riverside Records RLP-1138 and Original Jazz Classics OJCCD-135-2] remains one of my personal favorites.
The following recounting by Orrin as to what went into making it is also drawn from the boxed set booklet to Thelonious and Me by Orrin Keepnews. This annotation is also a reminder of how grateful Jazz fans should be for the “digital revolution” and its related CD reissues because many of these compact discs contained rediscovered additional tracks and/or music that was previously thought lost.
SESSION 2O [out of 30] (February 28,1959) - The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall
"Three decades ago, it must be remembered, a jazz presentation in a major New York concert hall was still most unusual. Even with Monk's newfound popularity, the idea of offering full-band arrangements of his strange music was too daring for any professional promoter — this evening at Town Hall was put on by Monk's close friend Jules Colomby. And there was a full house!
The scores were the work of Hall Overton, in close cooperation with the composer. Six strong horn players were added to the current quartet (Charlie Rouse had just begun his eleven years as Monk's tenor player), and there was an unusual series of long and detailed rehearsals, rigorously supervised by Thelonious. So when we set up to record that night, there was no reason to expect trouble. Actually, we encountered only one problem, but it was a classic:
Staff engineer Ray Fowler and I were working just offstage, using a single tape machine. Accordingly, I asked Monk to glance at me before each number, to see if we needed a momentary delay to load a new reel of tape. He neglected to check only once—but it was during a reel change, so that the first several bars of Little Rootie Tootie were not recorded. At the first opportunity, I explained the problem to Thelonious, whose solution was direct, outlandish, and quite helpful. At the end of the scheduled program, with the audience screaming for an encore, he calmly announced that the recording engineers had "loused up" and proceeded to repeat the entire number. The start of the encore, of course, doubles as the opening of both versions here.
Since the full concert is being presented here exactly in performance sequence, we begin as the evening did, with three quartet numbers. At the time, knowing that there would be enough orchestral material for a full album, we used this first segment only to work on the recording balance. Many years later, I found that the unused quartet reel had survived. The performances were exciting (Monk was clearly full of enthusiasm on this triumphant night), and the sound actually much better than remembered.The material was easily put into shape for belated issuance. [There are frequent rumors about two additional quartet numbers. I do not remember any; I would very much doubt that there could have been as many as five small-group pieces on what was billed as an orchestra concert; and above all what is heard here is everything that was recorded that night]
There has also been some confusion about Thelonious. The original Riverside album begins with a shortened version; Monk was not happy with his chorus (which is the only solo), and we decided to use only the final ensemble chorus, presented as a sort of opening theme. The full version actually turned up on a late-1960s German reissue album; hearing about this finally led me to search for and uncover that tape in the vaults. Apparently it had survived without my being aware of it and had mistakenly been copied for that reissue. A very awkward edit was clearly audible in the piano solo — presumably the result of someone's attempt to repair whatever had initially bothered Thelonious. I don't recall whether it had been a technical recording flaw or a performance error. However, a few years ago I re-edited and basically smoothed over the original problem; the best possible full-length version appears here."
When trombonists J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding put their quintet together in the mid-1950's, some Jazz critics questioned whether it would work because of the sameness in the sonority of the two horns. I'm sure glad that J.J. and Kai went ahead with their association and formed a group that produced so much marvelous music as you can hear on the following video. The rhythm section is Bill Evans, piano, Tommy Williams, bass and Roy Haynes, drums.
In a comparison with Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane - whom the Jazz press dubbed “heavyweight tenor saxophonists” - being described as “the middleweight champion of the tenor saxophone” was as expression that seemingly haunted Hank Mobley throughout his career.
One can only wonder why Orrin Keepnews’ description of tenor saxophonist John Griffin as a “B+ tenor saxophone” player didn’t do the same for him.
Perhaps it was because by the time it was written in 1973, there were too few Jazz fans around to even care.
“Down at the lower level of the evolutionary process, there are species of animal life that on occasion eat their own young. Some primitive human tribes leave their useless elderly folk out in the wilderness to die. But as far as I know it is only the American public that, with terrible and monotonous regularity, deliberately destroys its own full-grown, youthful, and genuinely talented artists and entertainers.
Actually, it's not the whole American public that does this. After all, a very large proportion wouldn't even recognize an artist enough to say "hello" or "excuse me" if they ran into one on the street. And since I'm talking now about deliberate destruction, not just through ignorance, I'm not referring to that great silent majority (to coin a phrase). I am instead talking about us, the sensitive minority — listeners, fans, club-goers, and record-buyers like you (and, I guess, writers and record producers like me). What we manage to do is set our sights so super critically high that we will not settle for anything much less than superstars. Anyone getting a grade below A-minus flunks our course.
This is not a passionate defense of the rights of the incompetent. The really awful painters, musicians, singers, and jugglers usually and quite properly fail (except for those that are so bad that they sometimes join the real geniuses in the ranks of the commercially successful). I'm not even campaigning for more work for mediocrities. What I am specifically bitching about is our refusal to give house room to the works of those who are merely good or very good, without being superb or trailblazers or true giants.
Obviously, these remarks are closely related to the fact that these are notes for a Johnny Griffin reissue package. Johnny is, unfortunately for him, a superb example — almost a prototype — of what I'm complaining about. The fact is that Johnny Griffin is no John Coltrane, no Sonny Rollins, no Coleman Hawkins or Lester Young or Ben Webster. But he is certainly the equal of. and more likely than not superior to, pretty nearly any other tenor player you might mention. Don't go running names in rebuttal: I have my favorites, and you have yours; and the fact that Johnny Griffin was a friend of mine is undoubtedly one of the reasons I'm prejudiced in his favor. And of course it's the fact that you, or I, might easily substitute many another name for Griffin's without tampering with the logic of what I'm claiming that makes me so vehement on this subject.
The point, then, is that Johnny Griffin is certainly a high B-plus tenorman, and that for about a decade he has lived and worked in Europe —
primarily because that was preferable to the two other alternatives: to keep on scuffling for gigs in the cultural center of the universe, or to give up music. When I say that he "was" a friend of mine, therefore, I'm not referring to any overt break between us, but simply to the fact that between 1958 and 1963 we worked together a lot, saw a good deal of each other, enjoyed each other's company — and haven't laid eyes on each other for the past decade.
The time in which I knew Johnny best was, of course, a relatively happy time for jazz. There was a reasonable amount of club work, and there were lots of independent record companies (very much including Riverside) willing to take a fairly inexpensive few chances on recording a batch of B-plus musicians. Of course some of those had already (to stick to tenor saxophone examples) turned into Sonny Rollins or were about to turn into Coltrane. But most of them just stayed themselves: capable of specific bursts, or full evenings, or even entire albums, of notable creativity and joy; but never finishing first in a poll, or causing lines to form outside clubs, or having best-selling records.
And, failing to scale those heights, all such artists get to be adjudged failures (or at least non-successes) in our society. But who was it that decreed that art is a win-or-lose proposition? Who? Why, it was us, the same folks who can tolerate, but just barely, a baseball team that finishes second for a couple of years, but then are most likely to stop going to the ballpark. You don't really have to be on the top end of the charts to be tolerable to a jazz record company. The economics of our specialized music world, particularly back in the late 1950s, enabled us to recoup our investment from an album that only sold a few thousand copies. Even a more ambitious project or two didn't hurt too much if they more or less bombed. And most jazz record companies of that era were owned and operated by fairly freaky, jazz-fan kinds of people; and we got very stubborn about continuing to record musicians we dug, and whose capabilities we enjoyed and believed in. (And when once in a while a young guitarist turned out to be Wes Montgomery and got straight-A grades, or an always-A-plus giant like Thelonious Monk broke through to salable recognition, that made it fiscally and emotionally possible for us to keep on being stubborn.)
But it was still a rather precarious life. A musician who doesn't sell enough records to earn additional royalties gets to feel pretty frustrated. He also doesn't get to work all that much in clubs or concerts, and when jazz begins to slide down the popularity scale, as it began to do in the early '60s, he is the first to feel the pinch. And when jazz really falls off a cliff, as it did in the mid-'60s, he either keeps on scuffling for gigs, or gives up music, or maybe leaves for Europe. (And after a while probably finds that Europe is part of our culture-laggard society, too, and maybe is being asked to absorb too many escapee musicians.)
Nobody starts out in any art form ever thinking about being B-plus or lower. Every member of every symphony orchestra violin section in the world believed as a child (or at least accepted Mama's belief) that he would be a famous concert artist. Nobody comes to his first big-band jazz job, or his first record date, doubting that the world will open up wide for him before long. To that extent, the artist usually begins as one of us, as a member of our victory-oriented culture, wanting to be the "best" tenor player in town.
But most of them quickly come to understand that, within the society of the "good" players, there is no need for any permanent, definitive "best." (In the legendary cutting contests of an earlier jazz era, not even Coleman Hawkins or Louis Armstrong or Art Tatum was expected to be a winner every night.)
One important aspect of the jazz musician's realization that creative art should not be a win-or-lose proposition can be the growth of a sense of real comradeship. Quite possibly the fact that the public usually thought of them as competitors helped to build their own quite opposite attitudes, at least during the late-'50s/early-'60s "relatively happy time" I was referring to. To return specifically to Griffin. I first heard of him in 1956 when Thelonious Monk, returning from a job in Chicago, sounded off about the local tenor player he had worked with there. Blue Note Records had grabbed him before we had a chance to act, but for a year or so Johnny worked his way into the large, shifting group I sometimes think of as the Riverside stock company.
Then and later he was a sideman on albums featuring Monk, Wes Montgomery, Nat Adderley, Blue Mitchell, Clark Terry, Philly Joe Jones, Chet Baker. By 1958 he had become established in New York, had reached the ripe old age of thirty, had served that almost inevitable apprenticeship as one of Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers (practically every trumpet and tenor worth his salt in the hard-bop idiom of the '50s seems to have done a valuable stretch with that band), and had succeeded Coltrane as the horn in Monk's Five Spot quartet.
By 1958 he was also newly signed to Riverside, and on his first albums as leader for us was able in turn to recruit comrades as sidemen: Philly Joe, Wilbur Ware, Donald Byrd, Pepper Adams, Blue Mitchell, Wynton Kelly.
Looking at my liner notes for his first albums, I am able to recall that he began his career in Lionel Hampton's big band, that his middle name is Arnold, that he was born and raised in Chicago, and that in high school he was primarily an alto player. Looking into my memory, I recall other facts — that this mild-looking, slight young man could execute brilliantly on his horn at killingly fast tempos (not an un-valuable quality when working in front of Blakey), but that he came to be very annoyed at being described as things like "the fastest gun in the West."
There were many reasons other than speed for singling Johnny out from his contemporaries. He had a richly deep sound, and he had a lovely awareness of roots — he knew blues and gospel and, to quote myself, he was "not one of those modernists who think that a reference to an old-time jazzman probably means Charlie Parker."
I also found it unusual and valuable that Griffin almost always thought of his albums as related wholes, not just a string of tunes united only by having the same personnel. Today, the "concept" album is not only commonplace, it is just about a necessity; in the more loose-jointed period in which Johnny recorded for Riverside, it was pretty daring. It was also pretty daring for a musician to suggest to one of us less-than-wealthy labels that we try anything larger than a sextet date. Griff dared both: he wanted to do a date tied together by being entirely in a funky, "church blues" bag, and he wanted at least a moderately big-band sound behind him. He kept on wanting, and not getting, for quite a while. Then we struck a good lick: Cannonball Adderley's new band recorded an album in 1959 for Riverside that featured Bobby Timmons' church-y tune, "This Here"; it did a lot for Cannon and the label and for something that the world (or at least the record business) decided to call "soul music."
That music happened to be very close to what Johnny had been talking about, so we found it hard to keep resisting the idea. Whereupon, Griffin and a goodly number of his and our friends went into the studio and generated an album that made some little noise in its own time (including the fact that another arranger lifted the scoring of "Wade in the Water" and created a hit for another artist—but that's life, isn't it?). It also is an album that I find still makes a lot of sense today, which is no small tribute for a 1960 recording featuring a non-famous player. Its sense of blues-and-spirituals roots remains valid, and the full-flavored "preaching" tenor sound carries a very timeless emotional pull.
The following year Johnny had another idea for a concept album — it was again something that was quite fresh when he thought of it, but that others have made stale through overuse in the years since then. An instrumental tribute to Billie Holliday was a fine and offbeat idea back in 1961; Lady had died in the summer of 1959, and nobody had gotten around to eulogizing and canonizing her (it would of course be more than a decade before a movie biography, with Billie being imitated by a Motown star, would be a good commercial idea). Riverside had grown somewhat more affluent and self-assured in the period between the two albums; this time I even went for the luxurious touch of a few dark-sounding strings along with a sizable brass ensemble. All of which helped create an effectively mournful, soulful setting in which Griffin— without trying to imitate or even parallel Billie, but just being a musician who had known her and loved and understood her music—could do a remarkably fitting and creative job of "singing" some of her songs. (This is the sort of thing your B-plus musician can do, where an A type would possibly feel it was beneath him.)
These two albums are also pretty good working examples of that comradeship I was referring to: names like Nat Adderley and Clark Terry and Barry Harris and Ron Carter and Bob Cranshaw turn up here as they do on many Riverside sessions. (I recall Harry Lookofsky, one of the busiest studio violinists of that period, volunteering to round up the viola and cello players needed for the first day of the Holiday album, and then turning up himself to take one viola chair — just because, he said, the session sounded like fun and he wanted to be in on it.)
Neither these albums nor the many others that Griffin made in those years broke any sales records, but they were a very interesting lot: some straight-ahead, some experimental (like the one with two bassists and French horn Julius Watkins), and of course the series of Tough Tenor swingers made during the period when he was working side by side with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis. Then came the leaner years and the departure for Europe, where he worked with pretty good regularity (including a long stretch with the formidable Kenny Clarke-Francy Boland big band), although, as I have noted, the European market has also become a declining one for expatriate American jazzmen.
My main point continues to be that it is a damn shame that the U.S. jazz scene has been unable to support and sustain, or in any way to directly or indirectly subsidize its Johnny Griffins, The only counterbalancing feature, in his specific case, is that the way things worked out in the very late '50s and very early '60s, it was possible for one of my favorite non-great Jazz musicians to set down some very strong examples of his very strong work.”
Before he became a sizzling Jazz-Rock Fusion superstar for Warner Bros. and Columbia Records during the 1970s [and beyond], pianist-composer Herbie Hancock made seven LPs under his own name for Blue Note Records in the 1960s.
A few of these albums were hugely successful, especially for someone like Herbie, who during the 1960s was still primarily a Jazz musician and who was largely unknown to the greater public.
That lack of recognition would begin to change almost immediately with Herbie’s first LP for Blue Note – Takin’ Off - which contained the commercial hit tune – Watermelon Man. [conguero/band leader Mongo Santamaria also recorded a very successful version of the song].
The year was 1962, which was also a seminal year for Herbie as he joined the Miles Davis quintet along with Wayne Shorter on tenor saxophone, Ron Carter on bassist and drummer Tony Williams. This was to be Miles’ last “classic” Jazz quintet before he moved on to add more Rock ‘n Roll elements to his music along with a host of electronic instruments as these made their appearance in the late 1960s.
Herbie’s additional Blue Note LP’s were to all have at least one horn fronting a rhythm section, with one exception, an album he recorded in August 1963 that almost went unnoticed.
Entitled Inventions and Dimensions, it is a piano-bass-drums trio album although Osvaldo “Chihuahua” Martinez plays Latin percussion on all but one track.
The album marked the first time that Herbie had ever worked with bassist Paul Chambers and, for many of us, it was the first chance to hear Willie Bobo play a Jazz drum kit. Throughout most of his career, Willie was primarily known as a timbales player and Latin percussionist
As Nat Hentoff explains in his liner notes to the original LP, Inventions and Dimensions gets it title
“… [from the fact that it] reflects Hancock's increasing preoccupation with releasing himself from what he terms the customary jazz ‘assumptions.’ Usually, he explains, ‘you assume there'll be chords on which to base your improvisations and you assume most of the time that the playing will be in 4/4 and that the bass will automatically walk. On this date, I told the musicians not to assume anything except for a few rules I set for each piece, and every time those rules were different. As it happened, Paul Chambers did often play a walking or a recurring rhythm, but that was because he wanted to play that way. I didn't suggest it, and he could have done whatever he wanted. There were no specific chord change on any of the tunes except Mimosa, nor did any of the tunes have a melody to begin with.’”
The musical departure inherent in this last sentence is what caught my ear when I first heard the album.
But the music on this recording is no exercise in what came to be known as Free Jazz in the sense of doing away with all musical rules and conventions.
According to Bob Belden in his insert notes Herbie Hancock: The Complete Blue Note Sixties Sessions
“On August 30, 1963, Herbie went to Englewood Cliffs to record another Blue Note album. Instead of the typical Blue Note dates he was creating, Herbie sought to do something different, something that reflected what he felt about his playing at the time. Since he had been on the road steadily since May, he may not have had enough time to write complex new material. His associations with more open musicians may have planted the seed of adventure, but the confidence of being Miles Davis's pianist had a lot to do with Herbie's next album.”
To my ears, what is so compelling about this recording is best exemplified in the track entitled A Jump Ahead, which we have used as the soundtrack to the video tribute to Herbie’s Blue Note years located at the end of this piece.
As Herbie denotes above in the Nat Hentoff quotation, A Jump Ahead does not have a conventional melody or theme.
Instead, the tune gets its structure from a four-bar ostinato played by bassist Paul Chambers.
An ostinato is a short melody pattern that is constantly repeated in the same part at the same pitch.
Nat Hentoff’s notes contain this further elaboration:
“The rule which Hancock set for A Jump Ahead was for Paul Chambers to select an introductory four-bar pedal tone. ‘Then there come sixteen bars of time,’ Hancock points out, ‘in which what I improvise is based on the pedal tone Paul played during the first four bars. Another four-bar break follows, for which Paul selects another note. I never knew what Paul would play, and that's how this one got titled. He was always a jump ahead. Incidentally, since any one note can be related to all twelve tones on the keyboard, I had complete freedom to utilize Paul's pedal notes any way I wanted to. Those notes acted as a note in a chord, but I formed the chords in my own way. Again, there was no preconceived melody, and the harmony came from the notes Paul chose.’”
Structurally, A Jump Ahead is what may be referred to as tonal music.
And in tonal music, a pedal tone is a sustained tone, played typically in the bass. Sometimes called a pedal point, a pedal tone is a non-chord tone.
The term “pedal tone” comes from the organ’s ability to sustain a note indefinitely using the pedal keyboard which is played by the feet; as such, the organist can hold down a pedal point for lengthy periods while both hands perform higher-register music on the manual keyboards.
In effect, Chambers acts like the organ pedal keyboard while Herbie plays over it using both hands on the piano keyboard.
One other point that may be of interest is Willie Bobo’s use of very thick/heavy drumsticks that really serve to crackle & pop the snare drum and crash the cymbals. Such large sticks take great control and using them masterfully, Willie generates tremendous swing on this six-and-a-half minute cut.
Paul’s four-bar ostinato can be heard at the outset of the track, again at 18 seconds, and again at 35 and 53 seconds and so on.
Each time it is followed by a 16-bar improvisation that Herbie conceives based on the pedal tone that Paul selects.
In effect, A Jump Ahead is the Jazz equivalent of the geometric head-start in which one never catches-up.
To my ears, Herbie’s solo really hits its stride on A Jump Ahead at around the 2:42 mark [which Willie conveniently underscores with a cymbal crash!] and just soars thereafter.
It's not often that one gets to read first-hand accounts about the early makers of the music - primary source material about Jazz masters like Pops, Duke, Fats, Billie and Eddie Condon. That's because there aren't too many people around from those halcyon days to tell their stories from a first person perspective. Timme Rosenkrantz's memoirs is one such book. It first posted to the blog on April 17, 2012 and I wanted to reprise it to edit out some flaws, add photographs and include the Eddie Condon video which you'll find at the conclusion of this piece.
“This book is not a sociological or jazz-historical work; it is not a reference book on the evolution of jazz over the ages. There are lots of those!
This is a book about my adventures during many, and sometimes long, visits to the jazz capital of New York; about the thrill it has been to meet the great and lesser jazz musicians and their friends. It had to be a happy book about happy people and their music, and it is written by a happy man who is happy because he has been lucky enough to get close to that world, even to live the life he had, so to say, chosen as his own.”
- Baron Timme Rosenkrantz
Every time I’m the least bit inclined to forget bassist and Jazz author Bill Crow’s admonition that “Jazz should be fun,” something comes along to remind me of the import of this remark.
Most recently, it came in the form of Fradley Garner’s superb English adaptation of Timme Rosenkrantz’s Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969.
As these dates denote, Mr. Rosenkrantz, a Danish baron, spent a good portion of his life in New York City when Jazz was first coming into existence and he offers exciting and enthusiastic glimpses of this time-gone-by in the thirty-six vignettes that comprises the chapters of his memoirs.
Each chapter is a short essay and collectively they form an episodic stroll through the Jazz clubs, theaters and gin joints of Harlem [and later 52nd Street] during its heyday as the “must visit destination” for any Jazz fan.
Mr. Rosenkrantz’s lovely stories are also a brilliant example of the power of one of William Zinsser’s key points in his On Writing Well when he enjoins us to “ … let the person speak to the reader in his own words.”
The very manageable chapters and the cozy manner in which the stories contained in them are told create a much welcomed first-person narrative at a time when many of the books being published on the subject of Jazz are overly analytic and coldly academic in nature.
Credit for the engaging “tone and tenor” of Mr. Rosenkrantz’s memoirs must be given to Mr. Fradley Garner for his brilliant English translation/adaptation which is replete with a number of explanatory footnotes that help make the book even more lucid.
And while Mr. Rosenkrantz’s commercial Jazz ventures [record producer, record shop owner, concert producer, Jazz club owner] ultimately failed causing him to comment – “You can say I was born under an unlucky star if you want to.” – he’s quick to also acknowledge: “But every so often that star shone brightly and made up for all the sunshine that I slept through.” [p. 186].
Mr. Rosenkrantz was to experience first-hand the old adage: “The best way to make a million dollars in Jazz is to start with two million!”
Yet, it’s difficult to feel too sorry for him, as based on the experiences he shares in his book, Mr. Rosenkrantz met everyone who was anybody in the world of Jazz during its formative years and had the time of his life while doing so.
If this book is a testimonial to anything, it is to the fact that Mr. Rosenkrantz definitely knew how to have fun with Jazz.
Judging from a reading of Mr. Rosenkrantz’s anecdotes, tales and yarns, perhaps the book might have been alternately subtitled: A Danish Baron’s Book of Enchantments, Revelations and Amusements in The Land of Jazz.”
Take for example the title of the work’s very first chapter: Get Off at 125th Street and God Be with You” which refers to the warning given by his midtown Manhattan hotel clerk when Mr. Rosenkrantz’s asked subway directions to uptown Harlem during his very first trip to New York in 1934.
“God certainly was with” Mr. Rosenkrantz for over the next thirty-five years he was to meet and, in many cases, become personal friends with Jazz luminaries such as Don Redman, Chick Webb, John Hammond, Benny Carter, Billie Holiday, Adrian Rollini, Benny Goodman, Willie “The Lion” Smith, Art Tatum, Fats Waller, Mezz Mezzrow, Eddie Condon, James P. Johnson, Slim Gailliard and Slam Stewart, W.C. Handy, Stuff Smith, Erroll Garner, Mildred Bailey, Bud Powell, and most especially – Duke Ellington – whom he [I think] correctly refers to as “The King of Jazz.”
Among the book’s many, other enchantments are the following stories from Mr. Rosenkrantz:
- “I'll never forget that first 1934 visit to Harlem!
I walked upstairs from the subway platform at the corner of 125th Street and Lenox Avenue and blinked twice as I stepped out on the sidewalk. I felt as if I had entered another world. Huge neon signs blinked around me and over me. Beckoning shop windows caught my eye. The traffic was frightening. Music blared from every open shop door. You might think you were standing on Times Square, Piccadilly Circus, or—stretching the imagination—Vesterbrogade, Copenhagen's main street, except for the people around you. They were all people of color. A solid mass of blacks, browns, yellows, grays moved along the broad avenue with a swinging, rhythmic gait that held this Nordic visitor in a trance. Their clothing was gay, their faces animated, their voices rang in the February evening air, as they fairly skipped along under the trees (now uprooted) on Lenox Avenue.
Following the crowd, I walked up the street, past several big movie houses, and suddenly, there I was standing in front of the Apollo Theater.
The Apollo was the last variety theater in New York City. Here the colossal show goes on at ten in the morning and runs nonstop until two the next morning—and to think I had wasted nearly my whole first day in conversations, cafeterias, and clouds!
In the lineup were the greatest black artists in the world—singers, dancers, comedians, strong men and weak women, balancing acts, jugglers, and magicians. And the best Negro bands of the day—plus, of course, a line of the prettiest and darkest chorus girls this white man has ever seen.
And there was nearly always a full house. The program ran over two hours and changed every Friday. In between performances, they showed some Mickey Mouse films and newsreels and a feature film, something with lots of action. The black audience—and it's almost entirely black—demands action. Something has to happen!
Still and all, the films were so bad, I still believe they were chosen to empty the house. They usually succeeded.
My first night, there was a big revue with Don Redman's Orchestra as the main attraction, costarring with the Mills Brothers, those fantastic tap dancers the Step Brothers, and a funny, blues-singing comedian, Pigmeat Markham. He later gained TV fame on the Ed Sullivan Show….” [pp. 14-15] …
- “And then Billie Holiday came on. I shall never forget her, standing there in the dim spotlight. Young and beautiful as a dream, her sensitive, full lips half open; those almond eyes almost closed, as if she were having a blissful dream. Her voice wasn't big, but it crept under your skin and stayed there. She sang like an instrument—sometimes like the softest plea of a saxophone, sometimes like the shrill command of a trumpet. Never had I heard anybody sing like this. You sat there, almost clenching your fists in ecstasy. Her way of phrasing the words was so different, yet so right. You instantly knew that this was the way a jazz lyric should be treated. That voice clutched you like coiled fingers.” [pp. 43-44]
- “Anyone who knew Fats loved him. He had a heart of gold. No one came to him in vain when they were needy. No one could resist his always buoyant and contagious spirit. His laugh could be heard for miles around.
I remember one of our mutual friends, Adrian, a young Dutch composer of whom Fats was very fond. Adrian had come over to New York to try to make it as a composer and arranger, but nothing was happening. To make ends meet, he had taken a job as a wastepaper basket emptier in an office. One night, when the three of us were together, Adrian started dreaming out loud. "If only I could afford to rent a little piano, I could really start writing some tunes and working on arrangements, and get out of that office. It's killing me!"
The very next morning two moving men showed up at Adrian's doorstep bearing a new grand piano. With love from Fats. It had a great sound. I'm sure Fats had taken the time to choose it personally. In fact, he came by often to play it himself, much to the joy of everyone within hearing range on West 87th Street. At least Fats wasn't to blame for our European friend never making it. "The Flying Dutchman" managed to do a few arrangements and place them, but at last hearing, Adrian was still trying to get paid.” [p. 75]
And here are some of the book’s revelations as recounted by Mr. Rosenkrantz:
- “C-R-R-R-R-R-R-ASH! An ear-splitting drumroll unfolded into a cymbal crash at the other end of the ballroom. Then the orchestra fell in, heralding the arrival of a little hunchback drummer, the greatest in the world, Chick Webb. Something happened to me I shall never forget, impossible to put into words. Only to be felt. And I’ve learned a great drummer is to be felt before he is heard. Chick seemed to turn a light on in me.” [p. 19]
- “Young Garner's father was a singer who played several instruments, as did his older brother, Linton. Erroll was an entirely self-taught musician who hit the keys when he was three years old and never did learn how to read music. But he played like no other pianist, and his flamboyant style was a delight to the ears. He would start a ballad with a long, discordant introduction that didn't even hint at the melody to come. At last when he swung into it, his left hand lay down chords like a guitar, keeping up a steady pulse, while his right hand never seemed to catch up, improvising chords or playing octaves that lagged way behind the beat for the rest of the number. Just a pinch of Fats Waller added spice.
I was fascinated by this fellow's joyously swinging piano, and I sought him out while Louis Prima was on. Erroll was anything but happy. He didn't know many people in New York and was downhearted. No one was interested in listening to him—Louis Prima was the showman attraction. And Erroll was only making forty dollars a week!
He told me he thought he'd go home soon, as it seemed nothing was going to happen for him in New York. Somehow, I had to stop him. I invited him home to 7 West 46th Street, showed him my rented Krakaur grand, and once he got started, it was impossible to pry him off the bench. Little did I know at the outset that he had a bad case of asthma and couldn't sleep lying down!” [p. 176]
- “An odd commentary on the vicissitudes of life is the fact that Ellington does not like the business of getting from one place to another. He cannot sleep on trains, ships, or in cars, and he especially dislikes flying. Constant traveling for forty years has not changed him at all. Approximately 14,650 sleepless nights account for those heavy bags under his eyes. Come to think of it, he doesn't like to go to bed at home, either. Life fascinates him so much, it seems a terrible waste of time. He just seems to thrive on not sleeping!
On the road, he prefers to play cards with the bandsmen, very often winning all their loot—but he is a gracious loser, too. Until recently, when he bought an apartment in a skyscraper on New York's Central Park West, Duke had a modest little flat on Harlem's Sugar Hill. He fell for New York the first time he glimpsed the bright lights—which, to his imaginative soul, were an Arabian Night's dream.
A born big-city man, he has a deep-seated dislike for expanses of green grass, saying they remind him of cemeteries. Can't bear any kind of outdoor sports; regarded the walk down three flights of stairs in his old Harlem apartment as his daily constitutional; laughingly describes himself as "a hot-house flower."
"You have to be careful, Timme," he once told me. "There's nothing more dangerous than fresh-air poisoning!"”[pp. 158-59]
The following excerpts are examples of the book’s many amusements:
- “Pod's and Jerry's, also known as the Log Cabin, at 133rd Street near the corner of Seventh Avenue, was usually the last stop for uptowners and downtowners alike. Here you could bump into celebrities like Tallulah Bankhead, Frederick March, Franchot Tone (or his mother, playing drums), and other New York theater people and Tin Pan Alley types. Many had been slumming at the Cotton Club, where they watched floorshows featuring the Duke Ellington, Cab Galloway, or Jimmie Lunceford orchestras. They'd show up in top hats and tails or dripping in ermines. As a rule, they circulated incognito, wearing oversize sunglasses to make themselves unrecognizable, which never worked nor was it intended to.
This scene inspired Don Redman to write a tune, "Take Off Those Dark Glasses, We Know Who You Are!" Confronted by one of those notables, Harlemites would chant the melody.”[p. 27]
- “A few years ago, Eddie Condon made a tour of the British Isles that is still remembered. With him he had his jug buddies Wild Bill Davison and George Wettling. The tour turned into a contest of how much liquor can be consumed while playing trad jazz. Who won I don't have to guess: Eddie had no peers. But nobody seemed to mind, for this was a very special occasion—the very first time the Brits had heard a stomp-down, sure-enough, live Dixieland band….
Arriving in a principal city, they were met early in the morning by the I press, who tracked them to their hotel. They found Eddie in bed with the hangover of all time. He could hardly move, but the interview was important, and the road manager let the scribes in. Eddie lay flat on his back with his hat on. "Go on, shoot!" he growled. Anything else he mumbled was lost as he faded away.
"Mr. Condon, wouldn't it be better if you sat up a wee bit in bed, so we can hear what you are saying?" ventured one of the chaps.
Condon's eyelids stayed at half-mast as he cracked open his lips and croaked, "What the hell do you think I am, man, an athlete?" [pp. 153-54]
- “The New York Herald Tribune [subsequently, The International Herald Tribune]once gave a luncheon in honor of Louis Armstrong at one of the fashionable Paris restaurants. Many prominent people from the literary world and theater were there, as well as music critics and reporters from all over the continent. Louis had asked me to come along.
It was a typical American luncheon with hamburger steaks and three different kinds of ice water. I think Louis had a side order of red beans and rice, his favorite fruits.
There were many speeches, and Armstrong was praised in as many different accents.
Then it was Louis's turn to say a few words. Somebody had asked him what his greatest thrill had been on this latest European tour. Louis answered:
"Last week we were playing in Rome. We gave a great concert and those Italian cats went crazy. We could’ve filled the Forum, no question about that, if they had repaired it! Well, the next day my wife, Lucille, and I had a private audience with the Pope. And it knocked us out, man! I told His Holiness about my music and about my Swiss Kriss (a laxative), which moves me almost as much as the music, and he was real great, you know?
"'What a beautiful wife you have!' the Pope says. 'Do you have any children?'
"'No, Pops,' I told him. 'But we're still working on it.' And do you know, the Pope fell o-u-t!
And so did everybody at the luncheon party.” [pp. 127-28]
Socrates once said that “the unexamined life is not worth living,” to which, an acceptable corollary might be: the unlived life is not worth examining.
No words could form a better description of the “Jazz Life” lived by Baron Timme Rosenkrantz as depicted in Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969.
As Jazz approaches the beginning of its second century, don’t miss you chance to read about what it was like soon after it all began.
The Great Condon, already into his 4th decade of music here, rips through the venerable standard Royal Garden Blues with the ample aid of Wild Bill Davison (ct), Peanuts Hucko (cl), Cutty Cutshall (tb), Buzzy Drootin (d), J. Varro (p) and Joe Williams (b).
