Lee Konitz: How to Get Away from Fixed Functions - Mike Zwerin

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

"Over the fifty years or so that I have been listening to Lee Konitz, I have always been struck by the fact that Lee seemed to limit the tunes in his repertoire to a few standards.

I never knew what the reasons were for Lee’s attenuated range of songs until I read the following in Lee’s interview in Wayne Enstice [WE] and Paul Rubin [PR] which appears in their book JAZZ SPOKEN HERE: Conversations with 22 Musicians [New York: DaCapo Press, 1994].

PR: We've noticed that on some of your albums certain standards reappear and, also, that on other tunes the changes sound very similar. 

LK: You say, first of all, the changes, the tunes were similar? I don't know what you mean by that. PR: The chord changes.

LK: I know what you mean by chord changes, but what tunes I wonder did you have in mind?

PR: "I'll Remember April." There are other songs that sound like that one. One may even be called "April," but on a different record. 

LK: Oh, they're all "I Remember April" but with different titles. Oh, I see what you mean. Well, that's simply a result of, I mean that's basically my repertoire, that few dozen tunes. And if I'm not setting up a special set of material for a record, I will choose those songs I like best and try 'em again, without the melody, say, just using the structure of the song, 

WE: So you prefer having a limited body of material to play? 

LK: If we have a little short confessional here [laughter], I keep thinking that it doesn't matter what tunes you play. The process is the same, and if it works then it's like a new piece, you know. And it is a fact that the better you know the song the more chances you might dare take. And so that's why Bird played a dozen tunes all his life, basically, and most of the people that were improvising—Tristano played the same dozen tunes all his life. And you know, it's amazing what depth he got. He wouldn't have gotten that otherwise, I don't think, in that particular way.

I think it's something similar to Monet painting the lily pond at all times of the day, catching the reflection of the light. I just feel with each situation I'm in, different rhythm sections or whatever, that "I'll Remember April" becomes just something else. And it is a very preferable point — that's the main thing. Everybody who knows that material knows that material pretty well — the listeners and the musicians. So they know, you can just nakedly reveal if anything's happening or not; there's no subterfuge. And that aspect of it is appealing to me, I think.”

- The Editorial Staff at JazzProfiles, from a blog posting entitled Lee Konitz: Food for Thought which appeared on this page November 10, 2017.

The late Paris-based jazz musician and International Herald Tribune writer Mike Zwerin posted a 41-week series entitled Sons of Miles to Culturekiosque Jazznet. In this series, Zwerin looks back at Miles Davis and the leading jazz musicians he influenced in a series of interviews and personal reminiscences. Here is the Lee Konitz piece in that series. It was published on August 27, 1998 so add 20 years to all the math in the article. 

“On a bleary Sunday morning in the Gare de Lyon Metro station in Paris, I looked through the graffiti on the window of my overheated car and saw Lee Konitz trudging along the platform with suitcases and saxophones. I waved but he was too busy with the load to see me.

When I told him the story later, he laughed and said: "Once I was trying to lift a big suitcase on the steps of a Wagon-Lits and some lady said, 'Can I help you?' I thought... Thanks a lot. Get out of here. When I need your help I'll be ready to quit the road."

Ask Lee Konitz what he's selling after he says he's on the road nine months a year "like a traveling salesman" and he replies with a sly smile: 

"Eighth notes."

Who needs eighth notes anyway?

"Everybody needs that stuff." He was emphatic.

After more than 50 years in the note business, he described himself with as much astonishment as pride: "I guess I've earned the right to say it by now, I'm a professional improviser."

He is one of the few improvisers remaining who, like the late Stan Getz, are immediately recognisable by their sound. It was first heard in the '40s with the off-the-wall dance band led by Claude Thornhill playing Gil Evans arrangements of Charlie Parker tunes.

With the passing of time, his emotional, fragile, upper-partial, behind-the-beat sound and style became more familiar if not closer to the wall; with Lennie Tristano, the Miles Davis's "Birth Of The Cool" nonet, Stan Kenton, as leader and sideman with formations, often in Europe, too numerous to mention.

Konitz continued cutting down note production, moving slowly but inevitably to the minimal essence; like the ageing Matisse, learning about space. It would be more accurate to say that he began to peddle quarter notes rather than eighth notes. Less notes. 

Both style and sound were obviously "white." So, in any case, it has been said. The word requires quotation marks. Miles who was kind to Konitz in his autobiography, defines playing behind the beat as a "white" characteristic. One of the few altoists of his generation not to be overwhelmed by Charlie Parker, Konitz was a major influence on Paul Desmond and Art Pepper, both of whom were also said to sound "white."

"It's a pain in the neck," he sighed. "I've been apologizing in some way for not being black all my life. Like am I bluesy enough to be authentic? In fact, I'm just playing variations on a theme. They are neither black nor white. I hope they are beautiful, and I think I'm getting better at it."

In the early 1990s, "one door closed and another opened" when the director of the Danish Jazz Society called him at home in Manhattan - it was two days after his wife of 32 years died - with the news that he had won (the first white winner) their prestigious "Jazz Par" prize. The prize included $35,000, a concert tour and a recording. Coming when he was very down, it meant a lot: "It was a sort of justification of my entire life view."

Peers with more zap like Gerry Mulligan became stars while Konitz went his quiet way through lean decades. Although he ironically attributed it to his being a survivor - "people want to make sure to hear me one last time" - business got to be extremely good. He played the club Birdland in New York to SRO. In Christchurch, New Zealand, people paid $40 a ticket to hear him. In Paris, he attracted profitable business during a five-night stand in the fancy supper club Alligators.

He speaks like he plays, with modest lucidity. "I'm still no virtuoso. There are kids who can blow rings around me technically. But the reviews have been marvelous. An Australian critic wrote - oy vey - 'he's the kind of guy you'd want to meet at a barbecue,' which I guess is a compliment."

Along with tenorman Warne Marsh, Konitz was part of the school spawned by the blind pianist Lennie Tristano, who was "a guru to the point where I could still, 40 years later, recognize somebody who studied with him by the way they walk down the street. I finally had to leave that situation because I came to mistrust the cult thing. I had to find out how all that education would evolve for me personally."

He also left Scientology. A loner involved in a collaborative art who insists upon the psychic insecurity of totally spontaneous creation must feel a periodic need for the security of numbers. 

He traveled alone picking up local rhythm sections because he could not afford to bring his own band. There were compensations. "I guess you can say," he said, with that sly smile again, "that it's the difference between a productive marriage or having a new woman every night. I find musicians everywhere willing to reach out in my direction to try to find new compositional forms. Nobody prevents me from playing the way I like. Since 

I always prefer to start from scratch, playing with strangers is an advantage in a weird sort of way.

"As soon as I hear myself playing a familiar melody I take the saxophone out of my mouth. I let some measures go by. Improvising means coming in with a completely clean slate from the first note. The process is what I'm interested in. You can turn the most familiar standard into something totally fresh. The most important thing is to get away from fixed functions."

He maintained his sanity on the road by composing in hotel rooms and considering the physical strain of travel as though it were exercise. Something like jogging. The rewards are great. Early the morning after playing a hotel in south-west France, he rode two hours in a taxi to Bordeaux, took a plane to Nice, flew to Rome, missed the connection to Catania in Sicily, and had to wait for the next flight hours later.

He was met by a car and driven to a town square where a lot of elderly people were sitting patiently waiting for the jazz to begin. There was a full moon and (grotesquely underrated Italian pianist) Enrico Pieranunzi's trio was in place on the bandstand in front of a church.

Playing with them, discovering new resources, he thought that no amount of traveling or physical pain could ever deter him from the pleasure of doing this.

Saxophonist Benny Carter is over 90 and still improvising. Consequently, Konitz figures he's got 20 years ahead of him [He was right as Lee is still with us]. He met pianist Peggy Stern. They played duets and then found out that "we were able to communicate in some very nice ways. Many ways. I thought, my goodness, is this still possible?" He rejoiced in his new relationship. 

But he feels the weight of a 71-year-old body. How does he take care of it? "I tap dance a lot," he said.

Lee Konitz - I'll Remember April

Lee Konitz on alto sax with bassist Sonny Dallas and drummer Elvin Jones.

Art Van Damme - The Accordion in Jazz [From the Archives with Revisions]

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

“Art Van Damme, in his prime years, played so many gigs in clubs, hotels and concert stages across the USA and Europe that it is said that he never needed to do any practice. He was constantly in action, developing and honing his skills and repertoire, pioneering the use of the accordion as a jazz lead instrument.

So influential was Art’s playing style that he has influenced most of the western world’s jazz accordionists. One musicologist made the following neat comment: ‘The hippest cat ever to swing an accordion, Art Van Damme dared go where no man had gone before: jazz accordion.’”

- Rob Howard

The accordion seemed to be everywhere present during my growing up years in an Italian-American household in New England.

The world-class accordionist Angelo DiPippo often gave performances in various local venues.

Also available courtesy of my Dad’s record collection were the Capitol recordings that accordionist Ernie Felice made with Benny Goodman’s small groups.

And every so often, Art Van Damme would make an “appearance” at our house in the form of NBC radio programs, television shows hosted by Dave Garroway and Dinah Shore and long-playing records on the Columbia label.

The Columbia LP’s featured Art’s quintet which, because of his use of vibes and guitar and the way many of the groups arrangements were “voiced,” reminded me of pianist George Shearing’s combo.  A few of these albums also featured guest artists such as vocalist Jo Stafford or legendary Jazz guitarist, Johnny Smith.

Whatever the setting, Art’s music was always very melodic and featured arrangements that were very hip and swung like mad. Lasting little more than three minutes in most cases, each tune was a musical gem: the epitome of taste and perfection.

As was the case with Shearing’s quintet, nobody took long solos, but when Chuck Calzaretta played one on vibes, or Fred Rundquist took one on guitar or Art improvised on accordion, one knew immediately that they were good players who knew what they were doing on their respective instruments.

Because I was so accustomed to hearing accordion and, more importantly, to hearing it played well, I could never understand why the instrument became the object of so many jokes that unmercifully ridiculed it.

That is until I started gigging on a regular basis and ran into so many terrible accordionists which only served to make me appreciate the likes of an Art Van Damme even more.

However, even among those who held most accordionists in contempt, the mere mention of Art’s name brought a grudging approval that he was “… a class act although I can’t stand the sound of the thing.”

Although you would be hard-pressed to find anything about him in any of the manuals about Jazz, in a conversation that I once had about him with pianist and composer Mel Powell at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, CA, Mel referred to Art as “one of the most-talented musicians I’ve ever heard – regardless of the instrument.”

Not surprisingly, there’s plenty of information about Art in publications, blogs and websites that cater to accordion. In such circles, he has rightfully assumed legendary status as one of the instrument’s greatest performers.

It was to one such publication that we went in search of the following overview of Art’s career. It also contains particular reference to many of Art’s recordings. A number of these are available should you wish to seek them out.

© -Steven H. Solomon/Accord Magazine, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

ART VAN DAMME

Written by: Steven H. Solomon  Publication: Accord Magazine, USA. Reprinted courtesy of owner/editor Faithe Deffner. Back copies available.  Date written: Spring 1983

"At first glance, Art Van Damme seems like countless other successful West Coast residents. He is married, has three children and six grandchildren, and heads for the golf course every chance he gets. What makes his career unusual, however, is that he earns his living by playing the accordion.


Hold on a minute, you say. Since the accordion was invented about 150 years ago, thousands of musicians have put bread on the table by playing professionally. What is it that makes Van Damme so special?


It's simple. Van Damme is among an elite group of only about a half-dozen virtuosos who have been able to find just the right blend of technical and creative ability needed to be successful on the international level. This is what places Art Van Damme in a league all by himself.


Instead of playing just local clubs and whatever casual work is available, Van Damme routinely jets overseas for concert tours that draw thousands of fans. For those not lucky enough to get a seat at one of his sold out performances, he can be heard on European television and radio.


"Most of my work now is in doing concerts and clinics," Van Damme said recently when asked about his gigs. "This I enjoy more than doing club work, because the audience is more attentive and listens more intensely."


Van Damme prefers to be in front of the crowds, especially large ones, rather than while away his time in small clubs or in front of cameras and microphones. He believes that it all boils down to creativity.


"For recordings to be played on the radio, time is a very big factor. It is preferred that recordings be in the two or three minute category," Van Damme explained. "So when I do a concert I get a chance to stretch out, as they say. I get a chance to play quite at length."


To see a list of the countries Van Damme has visited with his accordion, you would think he was some kind of career diplomat making the rounds. He has toured in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Norway, Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia, France, Belgium and Switzerland, in addition to his considerable work in the United States.


Asked about his appearances in 1982, Van Damme replied, "I did the Grand Prix in France, a concert seminar and a radio show in Geneva, two concerts in Colorado and a month long tour back in Sweden. This included concerts, television and another album called "And Live at Tivoli with Quintet". By the way, that was my 20th tour and trip to Europe!"


Not bad for someone who was nine years old before he heard an accordion for the first time, on his parent's Victrola. He asked for and received lessons on an instrument not nearly as flashy as the ones played by his idols Ray Brown, Buddy Rich and Benny Goodman.


At an age when most boys like to play nothing but ball, Van Damme liked to play nothing but the accordion, up to four or five hours a day. He landed his first paying job, a not-too-prestigious booking at his home town theatre (but nothing to be ashamed of either), when he was a seasoned 10 year old pro!


"When going to high school I started a trio with accordion, guitar and bass, and worked with this group in night clubs for a couple of years and then added a fourth man," Van Damme said. "We did many things with two accordions but I preferred the sound of accordion, vibes, bass and guitar, so I discontinued using the two accordions and added drums a short time later. I felt this was the sound to go with."


His group covered the Midwest for several years when they were booked into the Sherman Hotel in Chicago for what turned into a six month job. NBC must have recognized a sure thing when they heard it, because the quintet landed a contract for radio and TV that was to be the start of a long term relationship.


"Besides doing our own shows, we worked with many top name entertainers of the time on programs like the Dave Garroway Show, Ransom Sherman Show, Bob and Day Show to name but a few," Van Damme said.


"And besides doing solo spots, we did a lot of background playing for top singers and instrumentalists such as Ella Fitzgerald, Peggy Lee, Dizzy Gillespie and Buddy DeFranco."


It was during this time that Van Damme had a record contract with Capitol Records, releasing "Cocktail Capers" and "More Cocktail Capers". Columbia Records signed Van Damme from 1952 to 1965, releasing no less than a dozen albums, among which were "The Van Damme Sound", "Martini Time" and "The Art of Van Damme".


"I left NBC in Chicago in 1960 after working for them for 15 years," Van Damme said. "Live TV and radio had been on the downgrade or downward trend. Sure, I've done TV and radio shows since then, but only on a guest artist appearance basis."


Van Damme opened a music studio and store in suburban Chicago after he left NBC, and appeared with the quintet as guests on the Today Show, Tonight Show, Mike Douglas Show and Lawrence Welk Show. It was at this point that Van Damme realised he no longer wanted the headaches of leading a band.


"I personally don't care to have the responsibility of having a regular group anymore. Original men from the quintet are all still situated in Chicago and I do work with them on occasions when in that territory," Van Damme said. "But as of now, I am not carrying a regular quintet. My work takes me all over and I use local men who I am familiar with."


In 1965 Van Damme signed with MPS Records of Germany and has recorded 16 albums during that time. He has been voted top jazz accordionist for ten consecutive years in the annual Downbeat poll and for four consecutive years in the annual Contemporary Keyboard poll. His radio and TV appearances, seminars, tours and clinics in the United States and Europe since then number in the hundreds.


What this rich background means is that Van Damme is today considered a top jazz accordionist. Some of his feelings on the subject provides much food for thought. For example, he thinks the accordion is not the ideal jazz instrument.


"The fact that we have two separate keyboards, as such, controlled by one force, is a problem. I refer to the bellows, which is the source for both sides, and should be used in the same vein as a trumpet player or sax man as a breathing device," Van Damme explained. "A pianist is free to use either hand as he pleases, but not the accordionist. This naturally only scratches the surface, but I feel this is a basic problem in playing jazz."


Van Damme is equally outspoken when it comes to assessing his field. He is not afraid to name names. "(Leon) Sash, Mat Mathews, Pete Jolly, (Ernie) Felice, (Tommy) Gumina, they are all good friends of mine I'm happy to say and each in his own style is great. They all have something to say on their instruments, helping to take the polka sound out of the accordion," Van Damme said. 

"Unfortunately, there are not too many really good jazz accordionists, but I do feel we are progressing." 


For the future, Van Damme seems likely to be just as busy as ever. He recently completed a pilot for a one hour live radio show with quintet and Roberta Sherwood on vocals that he expects to be syndicated. Plans call for a guest vocalist each week.


"After 38 years I'm going back to radio, which shows that if you live long enough, anything can happen," Van Damme said."

Sonny Criss: An Overlooked Giant

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

“ a piercing, passionate sound.”

- Mark Gardner

“I was playing with Sonny Criss and Hampton Hawes – a great Jazz pianist. … Sonny had such a great ear that he could hear something once and play it. …

Sonny Criss and I played together quite a while until I went to study with Joseph Cadaly [a first chair saxophonist at RKO Studies who taught reeds, harmony and solfège]. That’s when Sonny and I split up. He continued into progressive Jazz, and I went and studied.

When we split, he started going all up and down the Coast playing and going to Europe. But I don't know, it just didn't happen. He'd get records. People said he was great. They played his stuff. But it just didn't happen for him, and I think that kind of disturbed him. Especially when you put your whole soul and your whole life and just wrap up everything into something and it doesn't happen.

He was pioneering and when you're pioneering, it's kind of more difficult to get recognition …. You have to suffer when you're a pioneer. So that's what hap­pened, really, I think, with Sonny. He was just early.

- Cecil “Big Jay” McNeely, tenor saxophonist

Criss was a bop saxophonist, strongly influenced at first by Charlie Parker. But his mature style was more distinctive: he produced a warm, rich tone and a prominent vibrato that Par­ker lacked. He was capable of playing dazzling runs with such effortless grace that they never sounded ostentatious. An excel­lent jazz musician, through lack of opportunities Criss never gained the recognition he deserved.

- Barry Kernfeld [ed.], The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz

“Criss’ style is marked by super-fast runs, soaring, high register figures and a pure urgent tone and delivery. His ballad renderings are often characterized by sorrowful solos, spoken with manly regret and without a wasted gesture. At times Criss’ soloing bears comparison with Parker’s on the “With Strings” session.”

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

“Sonny’s was a talent too big to be denied. For me, he comes immediately after Bird as an alto saxophonist. … I don’t know anyone who was exposed to his playing who didn’t enjoy him.”

- Bob Porter, Jazz Historian

How do you overlook a giant?

This is not a trick question, as somehow, the mainstream Jazz world managed to overlook alto saxophonist Sonny Criss for thirty years: from 1947, when he first came on the scene, until his death in 1977.

Although Sonny was a player of extraordinary power and brilliance, outside of a small coterie on admirers, primarily in Los Angeles, he was largely unnoticed in Jazz circles in terms of his significance and importance.

Why? The guy was a monster player.

As is usually the case, if one is looking for information and explanations about modern Jazz in California between 1945-1960, a good starting point is Ted Gioia’s West Coast Jazz [Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: The University of California Press, 1992].

And as usual, Ted doesn’t disappoint offering over nine pages on Sonny’s career in his marvelous retrospective of Jazz on the West Coast [pp. 121-129].

Picking up where Jazz historian Bob Porter left off, Ted comments:

“Perhaps, the problem was, as Porter hints, that so few people were exposed to Criss’s music. Sonny’s career took place in Los Angeles (except for a short time in Europe). He never made the East Coast move, which benefited other talents such as Charles Mingus, Eric Dolphy, and Dexter Gordon.”

Ted goes on to explain: “ Although Criss's sound and conception stayed true to the model set by Bird, several differences are striking. Criss tends more toward even streams of notes, only occasionally matching Parker's masterful start-and-stop rhythmic phrasing. And even more than Parker, Criss maintained a strong gospel-ish blues bent in his playing. … Electricity is in the air every time Criss solos.”

Most, if not all, suicides are shocking, and the reason for Sonny’s remained obscure for many years until Ted discovered while interviewing Criss’s mother, Lucy, for his book on West Coast Jazz, that Sonny had been suffering from stomach cancer.

If you are new to Sonny’s music, you can explore his style and approach with a 2 CD set re-issued on Blue Note [7243 5 24564 2 0] entitled The Complete Imperial Sessions which is a compilation of three albums that Criss made in the 1950s: Jazz USA, Go Man! and Sonny Criss Plays Cole Porter.

Here are Bob Porter’s insert notes to the set.

© -  Bob Porter, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“IT didn't make any sense. Sonny Criss took his own life shortly after his 50th birthday just as things were finally breaking for him. After a hiatus of several years, he had resumed recording in 1975. An album for Xanadu, two for Muse and a pair for Impulse had brought his name back before the public once again. He was preparing to make his first Japanese tour. He had toured Europe in 1973 and '74 and found that his popularity, especially in France, was still strong. Everything was finally falling into place. Again, it didn't make any sense.

His entry in the Biographical Encyclopedia of Jazz details a career of fits and starts. He had the ability to play with major leaguers right from the beginning. Concerts for Gene Norman, tours (and records) with Norman Granz, associations with Billy Eckstine, Jazz at the Philharmonic and Buddy Rich were a part of his first ten years as a professional. Apart from a period in the early 1960s when he lived and worked in France, he was associated with the Los Angeles jazz scene. But in order to understand Sonny Criss, you must start in his hometown of Memphis.

W. C. Handy put Bluff City on the map musically early in the 20th century. Handy songs such as "Memphis Blues" and "Beale Street Blues" detailed some of the virtues of the community. Then and now, the blues is an ongoing part of life in Memphis but the flip side of the coin is the strength of gospel music in the same area. Memphis has produced some fine jazz musicians through the years, yet each of these players has had to leave town in order to build a career. The local music lovers appreciated the jazz played there, but there were few opportunities to make a full-time living. The best band of the pre-bop era was that of Al Jackson Sr. His son, Al Jr., would be a charter member of Booker T and the MGs. Jackson Sr/s drummer for much of his band's existence was Phineas Newborn, whose sons Calvin and Phineas Jr., went on to international fame. The first alto player in Al Jackson Sr/s band was Hank O'Day. Hank O'Day was the original inspiration for Sonny Criss.

O'Day had a big sound in the manner of Willie Smith or Hilton Jefferson. There are no recordings of him so there is no way to hear exactly what it was that attracted Sonny Criss. Yet O'Day's reputation lingered long in Memphis: many years later, his bandmaster gave Bennie Crawford the nickname "little Hank.” The "little" tag soon disappeared but Bennie has been Hank Crawford his entire professional career.

Sonny Criss also heard Charlie Parker before he left Memphis. Parker's solo on Jay McShann's "Hootie Blues" was of keen interest to the young saxophonist before he knew the name of its player. "It was clear to me, right away," he once remarked, "that someone had found a new way to solo on a twelve-bar blues." The final influence on Criss was Eddie Vinson, primarily for his feeling. On blues at certain tempos, Criss and Vinson can sound very much alike. Benny Carter has also been cited as an influence on Sonny Criss; while there is no question that Sonny Criss had great respect and admiration for Carter, the evidence of influence is scant.

The Criss family moved to Los Angeles in 1942. By the time he had graduated from High School, Sonny was working the Central Avenue territory with a variety of small groups. In 1947 things really picked up for Criss: He played some gigs with Howard McGhee and appeared with McGhee at Gene Norman's Just Jazz concert in April. He worked at Billy Berg's, backing Billy Eckstine, in a group led by Al Killian. That group (which also included Wardell Gray) worked up the coast with Eckstine and at the conclusion of the tour continued to appear under Killian's leadership. They were back in Los Angeles for the show Ralph Bass promoted at the Central Avenue Elks' Hall in early July. The band then played Seattle, San Francisco and spent several months in Portland. Acetates were cut in Portland and the Killian group appeared on the Armed Forces Radio series, Jubilee.

In 1948, Criss began working with Jazz at the Philharmonic [JATP]. At the conclusion of the spring 1949 JATP tour, he worked up and down the eastern seaboard with a group led by Flip Phillips. He made his first recordings for Granz in September and gigged with The Lighthouse All-Stars. Things continued along similar lines until 1952 when the bottom of the scene began to drop out. By this time Criss was known as a soloist and a small group specialist which would be his role for his entire career. He rarely got any studio gigs (although he popped up on a Jimmy Witherspoon Modern session) and while he gradually built up a reputation as a leader around Los Angeles, he never worked enough out of town to establish himself as a draw on the road. In late 1955, he began a three-year association with Buddy Rich.

West Coast jazz was not something that held any interest for Sonny Criss and the record labels operating around town such as Pacific Jazz, Contemporary, GNP or Jazz West weren't interested in what Sonny was playing. Then, all of a sudden, things changed. During 1956, despite the fact that he had recorded only four single sides as a leader and had never made an album, Sonny Criss recorded three LPs for Imperial Records.

On the surface this looks crazy. Lew Chudd had founded Imperial Records in 1945, and initially its recordings were of Mexican artists. But it had shown a penchant for developing country acts (Slim Whitman) and rhythm & blues performers (a host of fine artists, mostly from New Orleans, headed by Fats Domino). They had dabbled in modern jazz during the 10"- LP era with a pair of fine recordings by Charlie Mariano, but since that time had done almost nothing. Imperial was a singles label and until 1956 had no 12" IPs. Apart from Sonny Criss, Imperial issued two albums by Wild Bill Davis and one by Warne Marsh (reissued on Intuition by Lennie Tristano and Warne Marsh — Capitol Jazz 52771) and that constituted their attempts at jazz recording for quite a while. Those albums had a very short shelf life and by the end of the decade had been deleted. A compilation taken from all three Criss albums was issued in 1962 and quickly disappeared. The albums have been reissued on several occasions in Japan.

The music on these albums is uniformly excellent. There has never been any individual credited with producing these albums but whoever it was they did a fine job. Criss had chosen his accompanists well, the material is a thoughtful blend of standards and originals and the performances are absolutely masterful. Highlights would include the four titles with Barney Kessel, the ballad "More Than You Know" (especially the verse) and the Criss masterpiece, "West Coast Blues” from the Jazz USA album; all of Sonny Clark's playing and the blazing "The Man I Love" from Go Man and "What Is This Thing Called Love" from Sonny Criss Plays Cole Porter. These recordings are every bit as good as the more celebrated Criss records from the 60s and 70s.

Sonny is remembered fondly by almost everyone who ever heard him play. He had an innate ability to communicate. His passion for a beautiful ballad or a funky blues was equal to his lightning quick articulation at fast tempos. The music here is the last major Sonny Criss material to come to CD and if you have not encountered this artist before, one listen will make you want more. There is other Sonny Criss material on CD but for many of us there could never be enough.

— BOB PORTER March, 2000”

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - "Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year"

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

Certainly the most unusual recording artist I ever encountered was Roland Kirk, who later added “Rahsaan” to his name. Shortly after I joined Argo, Ramsey Lewis told me he had recently heard a remarkable player in Louisville and had told him if he was ever in Chicago to be sure to look me up.

It was perhaps a month later that the receptionist rang me and said there was a man named Roland Kirk in the lobby to see me. I went there and was met by an extraordinary sight: there stood a man in dark glasses, raggedly dressed and carrying a white cane. Beside him was an old golf bag with two wheels attached that allowed it to be pulled. In it were some strange horns that looked like reed instruments. Over his shoulder in a separate cloth bag was a tenor sax. He was alone.

I greeted him, brought him into the office, and he produced an LP he had recorded some time previous for a small label in the Midwest. I played it and was immediately taken by his extraordinary ability to play several instruments at the same time and with great jazz feel. Kirk told me that he and his rhythm section had driven to Chicago to look for a gig and to take a chance that I would record him. I would and did. We got a contract signed, a recording date was set, and the resulting album was issued as “Introducing Roland Kirk”.

My next album with him would be for Mercury. Shortly after “Introducing” was issued I was rehired by them to direct their jazz program, and with agreement from Argo, I was able to take Roland with me.

Our first Mercury album, done in New York, was titled “We Free Kings,” and became the album that really brought Kirk to the attention of disc jockeys, jazz fans and musicians. It was his growling, moaning, utterly unique flute playing on one track that created all the attention.

After the first take on a yet-unnamed blues, a friend of mine, Phil Moore, the noted vocal coach, drew Roland aside before we did take 2 and quietly suggested to him that he further personalize his performance by thinking of it as a story and giving it continuity. What resulted was an extraordinary and ground-breaking solo that culminated in Kirk growling an impassioned “You did it, you did it,” thereby creating the tune’s title and making Roland suddenly well-known.

Kirk’s refusal to let blindness keep him from trying almost anything that appealed to him made for some interesting situations. My favorite was the time I picked him up at his motel to take him to a recording date. He got into my car, but before I could turn the key to get started he asked, “Can I drive?” I just looked at him as if he was insane. “How the hell can you drive?” I asked.

“Just tell me what’s ahead and I’ll be ok,” he said.

I told him no.

A recent re-reading of this anecdote by our late, friend Jack Tracy, the Jazz record producer, writer and editor, brought us back to 10 CD boxed set of Rahsaan: The Complete Mercury Recordings of Roland Kirk [Mercury 846 630-2], which, in turn, led us to Gary Giddins’ review of the boxed set in his essay, Rahsaan Roland Kirk (One Man Band), Visions of Jazz: The First Century [New York: Oxford University Press, 1998, pp. 431-436] from which the following excerpts are drawn.

“Roland Kirk could have been renown had he done nothing else but play tenor saxophone….”

“No one who experienced him in performance can forget the sight: a stocky blind man swaying precariously back and forth on the lip of a bandstand, dressed in a yellow jump suit, his face implacable behind black wraparounds, blowing dissonant counterpoint on three saxophones of varying lengths, while other instruments, some of his own invention, dangled from his shoulders, neck, ears, and, on occasion, his nose. Talk about one-man bands. ….”

Kirk's persona, musical and otherwise, came into focus during four highly creative years, 1961-65, when he was signed to Mercury Records. The story is traceable on a ten-CD cube, Rahsaan: The Complete Mercury Recordings of Roland Kirk, complete with a sorry denouement in which his flair for showmanship encourages the label to lead him down the garden path of commercial excess. In 1961, Kirk was a twenty-five-year-old phenomenon who appeared to have too much fun playing at a time when solemnity was big.

“Born in 1936 in Ohio, Kirk was fundamentally a bebopper. Educated at the Ohio State School for the Blind, he was playing professionally at fifteen. Five years later, he made his first recording for King, a characteristic brew of blues and ballads on tenor sax only. Albums for Argo (with Ira Sullivan) and Prestige (with Jack McDuff) followed and, incidentally, suggest some confusion about the early attempts to pigeonhole him: bluesman, modernist, funkmeister? By now, Kirk had his basic arsenal. In addition to tenor, he played an obsolete cousin to the soprano sax that he called a manzello, a straightened alto with modified keys that he called a stritch, a siren, a whistle, and, a conventional flute. He found the manzello and stritch in the basement of an old instrument store and taught himself to finger two saxophones while using the third as a drone. In this way, he could play a variety of reed-section voicings and accompany his own solos with stop-time chords. …”

A particularly worthy find among the previously unissued material in the Mercury cube is a ridiculously greased  and tortuous trip through Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year.  Maybe it was too much for the label back then.”

Here’s a video montage featuring many of Rahsaan’s LP and CD covers with the very same Spring Will Be A Little Late This Year as the audio track.  “Too much” in the complementary sense of the phrase comes to mind when I listen to Rahsaan’s performance on this track.

See what you think.

[Joining Rahsaan are Hank Jones on piano, Art Davis on bass and Charlie Persip on drums.]

Racism and Jazz

© Copyright ® Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

When Richard Sudhalter [who passed away in 2008] published LOST CHORDS: WHITE MUSICIANS AND THEIR CONTRIBUTIONS TO JAZZ - 1915-1945 [Oxford 1999] , saxophonist-composer-writer Bill Kirchner, a most perceptive fellow, put it perfectly to Dick: "this book is going to be a Rorschach test, but not for you. The ways in which people respond to it will tell you a lot about themselves."

How right he was about LOST CHORDS, Dick’s 870-page chronicle of the contributions made by white musicians to pre-bop jazz. Its publication over twenty years ago brought a wide range of responses, from thoughtful analysis to near-apoplectic vilification. Not that the latter came as any surprise. In these self-consciously compensatory times, anyone suggesting (in public, anyway) that this great music was born of anything besides the black experience is asking for trouble. Too many folks have invested too heavily in the dogma of exclusively black creationism to allow anything as awkward as mere fact to rock their neatly-rigged yachts.

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

Scholar-pedagogue Gerald Early summed it up in one review of LOST CHORDS: "It is difficult, in most scholarly circles, to write about American whites as whites these days unless one is being very critical of them." 

That's been the pattern in jazz perception here in the USA for about the past quarter century: the notion of white musicians as anything but brigands and exploiters, or feckless popularizers, is rigorously abjured. Ken Burns’ public television series on Jazz is infested with such beliefs.

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

My sadness over the divisiveness brought about by the Sudhalter book has been heightened by the fact that in my sixty years of being associated with Jazz, it is the one area in American society that has been the least effected by racism.

In terms of the musicians involved in making the music, race is not the abiding criteria. The only steadfast consideration has always been - CAN YOU PLAY IT!?  

But heartbroken as I am over the situation, all is not lost as I think I’ve found the solution to the problem in the following editorial that appeared in the August 3-4, 2019 edition of The Wall Street.

© Copyright ® The Wall Street Journal, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

What Would We Do Without the Word ‘Racism’?

The term became pervasive only after discrimination was banned and blacks made significant progress.

“If the country had a National Language Commission, and I were appointed commissioner, the first word I would put in cold storage—filed permanently away beside the N-word, the C-word, the K-word and other prohibited words—would be “racism.” In our day the word has been used imprecisely, promiscuously, perniciously and well beyond abundantly. If you are politically on the left, racism is what you accuse people of who don’t agree with you. If you are on the right, you can accuse them, I suppose, of socialism, but it doesn’t carry anything like the same resonance in moral opprobrium or self-awarded virtue as does racism.

The racist, if we can use the dictionary definition, believes that all members of a particular race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, which distinguish it as superior or inferior to other races. The true racist of course feels his own race is superior, and thereby he hasn’t any difficulty in discriminating or otherwise ill-treating members of other races, sometimes through government policy—as formerly under apartheid in South Africa or during the strict segregation once pervasive in the American South—or sometimes through ugly personal actions.

I am old enough to remember Jim Crow racism in action. When I lived in Arkansas in the early 1960s, there were still “colored” and white drinking fountains, separate bus and movie seating, and obvious differences in the quality of school buildings and other facilities available to blacks, and most people made no bones about it. Blacks were suppressed, oppressed and made to feel inferior in nearly every way that local governments could devise. The word racism wasn’t much in vogue in that place, or anywhere else, at that time. The majority of people who could rightly be called racist would not know what you were talking about if you accused them of racism.

Only now—long after the successful efforts of Martin Luther King Jr., Roy Wilkins Sr., Whitney Young, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and others, now that formally racist laws and social arrangements are defunct and significant progress has been made by blacks—has the word racism become part of everyday speech, the accusation of racism slung about with easy abandon.

Without the word racism Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton would be out of business, Cory Booker could not construct a sentence, Ta-Nehisi Coates would have to write musical comedy, and the so-called Squad of congresswomen would have to argue for the strength of their actual policies, which might not be so easy. Among the race-mongers in the current day no one is safe. Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi, while not flat-out called racists, have recently had racism imputed to them, and by members of their own political party, which must have stung.

I can think of no more devastating insult than being called a racist. In a mere six letters the word suggests one is tyrannical, vicious, stupid and cruel. I should rather be called a coward, a cheat, a liar or anything else you happen to have in your personal arsenal of invective. The others allow for the possibility of redemption; racism, short of death, does not.

The power of the word racism—always cocked, aimed and ready to fire—makes it impossible to say anything, outside the most obeisant praise, about black culture, black politicians, black entertainers or black anything. The entire subject is out of bounds to anyone who isn’t black, and many black intellectuals and writers are themselves in peril if they step outside the racial party line. This can’t be healthy, for blacks or for the country at large.

Matters are made worse when the charge of racism is ratcheted up to the national level, and the U.S. is casually called a racist country. By 2065 it will be 200 years since America abolished slavery; by then it is doubtful if ours will still be a dominantly white country, if we are even now. Not the best time, one would think, to be talking about reparations.

Racists there may well still be in America, small dreary white supremacist groups, individuals who for their own personal reasons need to look down upon blacks to be able to look up to themselves. But can there be any doubt that the vast majority of white Americans think of their black countrymen as fully their equals, are genuinely saddened by watching black mothers weeping on local television after learning that their children have been killed in gang shootings, and have no wish to see blacks in any way degraded?

The best solution, perhaps, is for black Americans to cease thinking of themselves as victims and to recognize that the real racists in this country are those who insist blacks are permanent victims and always will be so in what they claim is an irretrievably, hopelessly racist America. Forgoing easy recourse to the word racism, in a small but not insignificant way, might be a step toward eliminating racism itself.”

Mr. Epstein is author, most recently, of “Charm: The Elusive Enchantment.”

Lucas van Merwijk & the Cubop City Big Band • Mulata Rumbera