For many years,
the late Milt Jackson, affectionately known as “Bags,” was heralded as the undisputed
king of the vibraphone and most vibists accorded him their highest esteem and
pointed to him as a major influence.
I, too, love his
playing, especially in the context of the Modern Jazz Quartet.
But I’ve always
had trouble with the notion of ranking Jazz musicians, voting for them in polls
and comparing them as artists. I think it’s an absolute waste of time; a
meaningless exercise.
Jazz artists work
very hard to establish their own approach to the music and I would imagine
that, as is the case with actors, writers and painters, they have a tendency to
gravitate toward those artists whose work “speaks” to them.
What, then, are
the standards that one has to meet to be rated as “better” than another artist?
As Aristotle once
said: “Each of us is different with regard to those things we have in common.”
And so it is with
Jazz musicians in general and, for the purpose of this feature, Jazz
vibraphonists in particular. Everyone imitates and emulates while trying to
establish their own voice on an instrument.
Vibes are particularly
challenging to play uniquely because of the limitations inherent in how the
sound is produced on them.
Bags’ influence
was pervasive when it came to Jazz vibes. I’ve played the instrument a bit and
I recognize the truth in this assertion because I, too, found myself playing
Milt’s “licks” and “phrases.” They lay so easily on the axe. You drop you hands
[mallets] on the bars and out they come.
Another reason why
so many vibist sound like Bags may be because he played a lot of the same “licks”
[musical expressions] or phrases over and over again.
A lot of Jazz
musicians do this [some call them “resting points”], but one has to be careful
with repetitive phrases because employing the same licks too often can become
an excuse for not thinking [in other words, not being inventive].
The expression
that is sometimes used when this happens is that the musician “mailed in” the
solo.
Bags was one of
the “Founding Fathers” of Bebop, he toured all over the United States and Europe with the MJQ and he made a slew of
recordings with the group, with other artists as well as under his own name.
As a result, his
style of vibes had a lot of exposure.
This exposure
helped make Milt Jackson instantly recognizable as a major exponent of the
bebop, blues-inflected style of playing Jazz vibes.
But for my money,
no one has ever played the instrument more musically than Victor Feldman.
Bags’ influence is
there in Victor’s style, but Victor is his own man and takes the instrument in
a completely different direction than Milt.
There isn’t the
repetitiveness nor for that matter the constant bebop and blues phrases, but
rather, a more pianistic and imaginative approach, one that emphasizes longer
inventions and a constant flow of new melodies superimposed over the chord
changes.
Victor also
emphasizes rhythm differently than the dotted eighth note spacing favored by
Bags. As a result, Victor, begins and ends his phrases in a more angular
fashion which creates more surprises in where he is going in his solos.
The starting
points and pick-ups for Victors solos vary greatly because he is not just
looking for places in the music to put tried-and-tested licks, he’s actually
attempting to create musical ideas that he hasn’t expressed before.
Is what Victor is
doing “better” than Bags? Of course not.
Is it different? Is it ever.
Fresh and
adventurous. And exhilarating, too.
Jazz improvisation
is the ultimate creative experience.
One doesn’t need
any awards. You just can’t wait for the next time you solo so you can try
soaring again.
To help give you the “flavor” of Victor Feldman’s marvelous creative powers as a Jazz vibist, we'll close this piece with a track that has him
performing his original composition Too
Blue with Rick Laird on bass and Ronnie Stephenson on drums from his
triumphant 1965 return to Ronnie Scott’s Club in his hometown of London [Jazz Archives JACD-053].
It runs a little
over 8 minutes. You can hear the statement of the 12-bar blues theme from
0.00-0.22 minutes and again from 0.23-0.45 minutes. Each 12-bar theme closes
with a bass “tag.”
Victor and Rick
hook-up for a call-and-response interlude between 0:46-1:10 minutes before
Victor launches into his first improvised chorus at 1:11 minutes.
He improvises
seven choruses from 1:11-4:14 minutes before bassist Rick Laird takes
four choruses from 4:14-5:46 minutes.
None of Victor’s
choruses contains a repeated phrase or a recognizable Milt Jackson lick
[phrase].
When Victor
comes-back-in [resumes playing] at 5:46 minutes following Rick’s bass solo, if
you listen carefully you can hear him using two mallets in his left hand to
play 4-beats-to-the-bar intervals while soloing against this with the two
mallets held in his right-hand.
He even throws in
the equivalent of a big band-like “shout” chorus while trading fills with
drummer Ronnie Stephenson beginning at 6:56 minutes.
The closing
statement of the theme can be heard at 7:19 minutes ending with an “Amen” at 8:06 minutes.
When listening to
Victor Feldman play Jazz on the vibraphone, one is hearing a true innovator at
work. For him, making the next improvised chorus as original and as musically
satisfying as possible was always the ultimate goal.
It’s a shame that Jazz
fans are not more familiar with his work on vibes. Having heard it on a regular
basis for over twenty-five years, I can attest to the fact that it was
something special. The only thing that Victor Feldman ever mailed in was a
letter.
This overwhelming tribute to Sarah Vaughan preceded a Vaughan concert at the Smithsonian Museum in 1980. Not surprisingly,Gunther Schuller — certainly the jazz authority most deeply rooted in classical music — places Vaughan in the entire context of twentieth-century singing.
Perhaps what is surprising is that he finds her superior to every great opera singer of this period, but he makes every effort to substantiate his claims, not merely assert them.
These remarks are drawn from Mr. Schuller's collection entitled Musings and they appear in Robert Gottlieb, editor, Readings in Jazz: A Gathering of Autobiography, Reportage, and Criticism from 1919 to Now [New York: Pantheon Books, 1996, pp. 986-991].
THE DIVINE SARAH: GUNTHER SCHULLER
“What I am about to do really can't be done at all, and that is to do justice to Sarah Vaughan in words. Her art is so remarkable, so unique that it, sui generis, is self-fulfilling and speaks best on its own musical artistic terms. It is—like the work of no other singer—self-justifying and needs neither my nor anyone else's defense or approval.
To say what I am about to say in her very presence seems to me even more preposterous, and I will certainly have to watch my superlatives, as it will be an enormous temptation to trot them all out tonight. And yet, despite these disclaimers, I nonetheless plunge ahead toward this awesome task, like a moth drawn to the flame, because I want to participate in this particular long overdue celebration of a great American singer and share with you, if my meager verbal abilities do not fail me, the admiration I have for this remarkable artist and the wonders and mysteries of her music.
No rational person will often find him or herself in a situation of being able to say that something or somebody is the best. One quickly learns in life that in a richly competitive world—particularly one as subject to subjective evaluation as the world of the arts—it is dangerous, even stupid, to say that something is without equal and, of course, having said it, one is almost always immediately challenged. Any evaluation — except perhaps in certain sciences where facts are truly incontrovertible — any evaluation is bound to be relative rather than absolute, is bound to be conditioned by taste, by social and educational backgrounds, by a host of formative and conditioning factors. And yet, although I know all that, I still am tempted to say and will now dare to say that Sarah Vaughan is quite simply the greatest vocal artist of our century.
Perhaps I should qualify that by saying the most creative vocal artist of our time. I think that will get us much closer to the heart of the matter, for Sarah Vaughan is above all that rare rarity: a jazz singer. And by that I mean to emphasize that she does not merely render a song beautifully, as it may have been composed and notated by someone else—essentially a re-creative act—but rather that Sarah Vaughan is a composing singer, a singing composer, if you will, an improvising singer, one who never—at least in the last twenty-five years or so—has sung a song the same way twice: as I said a creative singer, a jazz singer.
And by using the term jazz I don't wish to get us entrapped in some narrow definition of a certain kind of music and a term which many musicians, from Duke Ellington on down, have considered confining, and even denigrating. I use the word "jazz" as a handy and still widely used convenient descriptive label; but clearly Sarah Vaughan's singing and her mastery go way beyond the confines of jazz.
And if I emphasize the creativity, the composer aspect of her singing, it is to single out that rare ability, given, sadly, to so few singers, including, of course, all those in the field of classical music. It is my way of answering the shocked response among some of you a few moments ago when I called Sarah Vaughan the greatest singer of our time. For it is one thing to have a beautiful voice; it is another thing to be a great musician—often, alas, a truly remote thing amongst classical singers; it is still another thing, however, to be a great musician with a beautiful and technically perfect voice, who also can compose and create extemporaneously.
We say of a true jazz singer that they improvise. But let me assure you that Sarah Vaughan's improvisations are not mere embellishments or ornaments or tinkering with the tune; they are compositions in their own right or at least re-compositions of someone else's material—in the same manner and at the same level that Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and other great jazz masters have been creative.
You can imagine that I do not say these things lightly, and that I do not make so bold as to make these claims without some prior thought and reason. For I am, as many of you know, someone who played for fifteen years in the orchestra of the Metropolitan Opera, loved every minute of it, and during those years heard a goodly share of great singing—from Melchior to Bjorling and DiStefano, from Flagstad to Sayao to Albanese and Callas, from Pinza to Siepi and Warren. Before that, as a youngster, I thrilled to the recordings of Caruso, Rethberg, Ponselle, Muzio, Easton, and Lawrence. So I think I know a little about that side of the singing art. And yet with all my profound love for those artists and the great music they made, I have never found anyone with the kind of total command of all aspects of their craft and art that Sarah Vaughan has.
I do not wish to engage in polemical discussion here. Nor am I Sarah Vaughan's press agent. I would claim, however — along with Barbara Tuchman — that though my judgment may be subjective, the condition I describe is not. What is that condition? Quite simply a perfect instrument attached to a musician of superb musical instincts, capable of communicating profoundly human expressions and expressing them in wholly original terms.
First the voice. When we say in classical music that someone has a ‘perfect voice’ we usually mean that they have been perfectly trained and that they use their voice seemingly effortlessly, that they sing in tune, produce not merely a pure and pleasing quality, but are able to realize through the proper use of their vocal organs the essence and totality of their natural voice. All that can easily be said of Sarah Vaughan, leaving aside for the moment whether she considers herself to have a trained voice or not. As far as I know, she did study piano and organ, but not voice, at least not in the formal sense. And that may have been a good thing. We have a saying in classical music—alas, painfully true—that given the fact that there are tens of thousands of bad voice teachers, the definition of a great singer is one who managed not to be ruined by his or her training. It is better, of course, to be spared the taking of those risks.
There is something that Sarah Vaughan does with her voice which is quite rare and virtually unheard of in classical singing. She can color and change her voice at will to produce timbres and sonorities that go beyond anything known in traditional singing and traditional vocal pedagogy. (I will play, in a while, a recorded excerpt that will show these and other qualities and give you the aural experience rather than my—as I said earlier—inadequate verbal description.)
Sarah Vaughan also has an extraordinary range, not I hasten to add used as a gimmick to astound the public (as is the case with so many of those singers you are likely to hear on the Tonight Show], but totally at the service of her imagination and creativity. Sarah's voice cannot only by virtue of its range cover four types of voices—baritone, alto, mezzo soprano, and soprano, but she can color the timbre of her voice to emphasize these qualities. She has in addition a complete command of the effect we call falsetto, and indeed can on a single note turn her voice from full quality to falsetto (or, as it's also called, head tone) with a degree of control that I only heard one classical singer ever exhibit, and that was the tenor Giuseppe DiStefano—but in his case only during a few of his short-lived prime years.
Another thing almost no classical singers can do and something at which Sarah Vaughan excels is the controlled use of vibrato. The best classical singers develop a vibrato, of a certain speed and character, which is nurtured as an essential part of their voice, indeed their trademark with the public, and which they apply to all music whether it's a Mozart or Verdi opera or a Schubert song. Sarah Vaughan, on the other hand, has a complete range, a veritable arsenal of vibratos, ranging from none to a rich throbbing, almost at times excessive one, all varying as to speed and vibrato and size and intensity—at will. (Again, my recorded example will demonstrate some truly startling instances of this.)
Mind you, what Sarah Vaughan does with the controlled use of vibrato and timbre was once—a long time ago—the sine qua non of the vocal art. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries vibrato, for example, was not something automatically used, imposed, as it were, on your voice. On the contrary, it was a special effect, a kind of embellishment—an important one—which you used in varying degrees or did not use, solely for various expressive purposes and to heighten the drama of your vocal expressivity. It is an art, a technique which disappeared in the nineteenth century and is all but a lost art today, certainly amongst classical singers, who look at you in shocked amazement if you dare to suggest that they might vary their vibrato or timbre. They truly believe they have one voice, when potentially—they don't realize it—they could (should) have several or many.
Here again, I think Sarah learned her lessons not from a voice teacher, but from the great jazz musicians that preceded her. For among great jazz instrumentalists the vibrato is not something sort of slapped onto the tone to make it sing, but rather a compositional, a structural, an expressive element elevated to a very high place in the hierarchy of musical tools which they employ.
Another remarkable thing about Sarah Vaughan's voice is that it seems ageless; it is to this day perfectly preserved. That, my friends, is a sign—the only sure sign—that she uses her voice absolutely correctly, and will be able to sing for many years more—a characteristic we can find, by the way, among many popular or jazz singers who were not formally voice-trained. Think of Helen Humes, Alberta Hunter,* [ *Alberta Hunter sang remarkably well until her death in 1984], Helen Forrest, Chippie Wallace, Tony Bennett, and Joe Williams.
So much for the voice itself. Her musicianship is on a par with her voice and, as I suggested earlier, inseparable from it. That is, of course, the ideal condition for an improvising singer—indeed a prerequisite. For you cannot improvise, compose extemporaneously, if you don't have your instrument under full control; and by the same token, regardless of the beauty of your voice, you have to have creative imagination to be a great jazz or improvising singer. Sarah's creative imagination is exuberant. I have worked with Sarah Vaughan, I have accompanied her, and can vouch for the fact that she never repeats herself or sings a song the same way twice. Whether she is using what we call a paraphrase improvisation—an enhancement of the melody where the melody is still recognizable—or whether she uses the harmonic changes as the basis of the song to improvise totally new melodies or gestures, Sarah Vaughan is always totally inventive. It is a restless compulsion to create, to reshape, to search. For her a song—even a mediocre one—is merely a point of departure from which she proceeds to invent, a skeleton which she proceeds to flesh out.
There are other singers—not many—who also improvise and invent, but I dare say none with the degree of originality that Sarah commands. She will come up with the damndest musical ideas, unexpected and unpredictable leaps, twisting words and melodies into new and startling shapes, finding the unusual pitch or nuance or color to make a phrase uniquely her own. When one accompanies her one has to be solid as a rock, because she is so free in her flights of invention that she could throw you if you don't watch out. She'll shift a beat around on you, teasing and toying with a rhythm like a cat with a mouse, and if you're not secure and wary, she'll pull you right under. She is at her best and her freest when her accompaniment is firmly anchored.
Perhaps Sarah Vaughan's originality of inventiveness is her greatest attribute, certainly the most startling and unpredictable. But unlike certain kinds of unpredictability—which may be merely bizarre—Sarah's seems immediately, even on first hearing, inevitable. No matter how unusual and how far she may stretch the melody and harmony from its original base, in retrospect one senses what she has just done as having a sense of inevitability—"Of course, it had to go that way, why didn't I think of that?" I go further: in respect to her originality of musical invention I would say it is not only superior to that of any other singer, but I cannot think of any active jazz instrumentalist—today—who can match her.
If it is true, as has often been stated through the centuries, that one way of defining high art is by the characteristic of combining the expected with the unexpected, of finding the unpredictable within the predictable, then Sarah Vaughan's singing consistently embodies that ideal.
Lastly, I must speak of the quality of Sarah's expressiveness, the humanism, if you will, of her art. Sarah has a couple of nicknames, as some of you know. The earliest one was Sassy. Next, around the early 1950s, she came to be called "the Divine Sarah," and more recently simply "the Divine One." Now that's a lovely thing to say about anyone, and I would not argue about Sarah's musical divinity, except in one somewhat semantic respect. What I love so in her singing is its humanness, its realness of expression, its integrity. It is nice to call her singing divine, but it's more accurate to call it human. Under all the brilliance of technique and invention, there is a human spirit, a touching soul, and a gutsy integrity that moves us as listeners.
How does one measure an artist's success? By how much audience they attract? By how much money they make? By how many records they sell? Or by how deeply they move a sophisticated or cultured audience? Or by how enduringly their art will survive? Sarah has been called the musicians' singer—both a wonderful compliment and a delimiting stigmatization. What seems to be true for the moment is that her art, like Duke Ellington's, is too subtle, too sophisticated to make it in the big—really big—mass pop market. God knows, Sarah—or her managers—have tried to break into that field. But she never can make it or will make it, like some mediocre punk rock star might, because she's too good. She can't resist being inventive; she can't compromise her art; she must search for the new, the untried; she must take the risks.
And she will be—and is already—remembered for that for a long time. To some like me—I've been listening to her since she was the very young, new girl singer with the Billy Eckstine Band in the mid-1950s—she is already a legend. I invite you now to listen to the promised excerpt—only one example of her art—a stunning example indeed, taken from a 1973 concert in Tokyo, during which Sarah Vaughan sang and recomposed "My Funny Valentine." Listen!!
(record played)
It is now my privilege to exit gracefully and to invite you to listen to the one and only Sarah Lois Vaughan!”
I choose I different for the audio track to the following video tribute to Sarah as I have always been particularly fond of her interpretation of You’ve Changed.
But while the tune may be distinct, I’m certain that after listening to Sassy on this track, you will agree that all of what Gunther says about her in his introduction still applies.
The late Frank Wolff, Alfred
Lion's partner in Blue Note, wrote, "I first heard Jimmy at Small's Paradise
in January of 1956. It was his first gig in New
York— one week. He was a stunning sight. A man
in convulsions, face contorted, crouched over in apparent agony, the fingers
flying, his foot dancing over the pedals. The air was filled with waves of
sound that I had never heard before. The noise was shattering.”
I wanted to expand a bit
upon an earlier posting about Jimmy Smith to underscore how great his
accomplishment was in bringing Jazz to the Hammond B-3 organ.
You can gain some
idea of the magnitude of Jimmy’s achievement from this 1964 Hammond
Times excerpt:
“I never did take
lessons, just taught myself. First, I learned about the drawbars and what each
one stood for. As time passed, I experimented trying out all the different
sounds. Next came the presets. I tried them out too but I don't use them very
much except when playing ballads or something sweet and soft. When it came to
the foot pedals, I made a chart of them and put it on the wall in front of me
so I wouldn't have to look down. My first method was just using the toe. In the
earlier days I was a tap dancer so the transition to heel and toe playing was
made without too much trouble. One thing I learned was that you have to have a
relaxed ankle. I would write out different bass lines to try for different
tempi in order to relax the ankle. One useful learning technique was to put my
favorite records on and then play the bass line along with them to see if I
could play the pedals without looking down and only occasionally using my chart
on the wall. This worked out fine.
When you are
properly coordinated, you get an even flow in the bass. Most often, organists
are uneven in their playing of the pedals, heavy here and light there. Soon I
was putting hands and feet together and achieving co-ordination. My first job
with the organ was at a Philadelphia supper club, playing a duo with drums. It
was here I began further experimentation with different drawbar settings and
using different effects and dynamics. It was before these audiences that the
Jimmy Smith sound evolved. People always ask me about this sound. This probably
is best explained in my approach to the organ. While others think of the organ
as a full orchestra, I think of it as a horn. I've always been an admirer of
Charlie Parker, and I try to sound like him. I wanted that single-line sound
like a trumpet, a tenor or an alto saxophone.”
And the following
excerpt from Kenny Mathieson’s Cookin’: Hard Bop and Soul Jazz, 1954-1965 offers
an even broader context in which to view Jimmy’s feat:
In musical terms,
… Smith … is the key figure in the evolution of the Hammond organ as a jazz instrument. As he says, the electric organ had been used
in jazz before he first took it up, either on an occasional basis by the likes
of Fats Waller and Count Basie, or more regularly by musicians like Glenn
Hardman, Doggett, Buckner and Davis. It was Smith, though, who brought the
instrument to genuine prominence in a series of recordings for Blue Note in the
late 1950s, and established it as a central jazz voice rather than an
occasional novelty. Given that he had no instruction, the speed with which he
had mastered the instrument by the time of his recording debut early in 1956
was a formidable achievement in itself, regardless of when he started.
The Hammond B-3
organ offered several advantages to the jazz player. Waller and Basic had
played and recorded on fixed pipe organs, but the Hammond was relatively portable, although anyone
who has ever been lured into helping move one will know that relatively is the
correct word. Laurens Hammond had begun manufacturing the instrument in Chicago
in 1935, and used a system of rotating steel tone wheels and an electromagnetic
pickup to generate both the notes and the additional overtone pitches
controlled by the drawbars above the two sets of keyboards (technically, organ
keyboards are know as 'manuals'). The introduction of the rotating Leslie
speaker in the early 1940s, combined with developments in the Hammond itself (notably the introduction of a
percussion stop), helped provide the instrument with its characteristic tremolo
sound. Later innovations introduced more technically advanced electronic
attributes which eventually led to the tone wheel system becoming obsolete, but
the tone wheel models have a distinctive weight and character to their sound
which is much sought after, and the Hammond B-3 has remained the classic
instrument of choice for jazz players.
Smith achieved a
new musical synthesis on the instrument, and took the playing techniques to
unprecedented levels. He developed a style which allowed him to play walking
bass lines with his feet on the pedals, while playing chordal accompaniment
with his left hand, and fleet, single-line melodies (or additional chord
punctuations) with his right. The freedom to supply his own independent bass
lines obviated the need for a bass player, and he formed what would become the
archetypal soul jazz unit in 1955, a trio with organ, guitar and drums (a
saxophone, usually tenor, was the optional extra in the equation). His music
brought together elements from bebop and swing with blues and rhythm and blues,
while the Hammond, which was widely used in black churches,
lent itself particularly well to the gospel elements which infused hard bop and
especially soul jazz. The combination would prove irresistible. The organ trio
flourished in black clubs and bars, and eventually became one of the most
popular of all jazz formats.
He brought his
trio to New
York
early in 1956, playing at Small's Paradise in Harlem and at the Cafe Bohemia in Greenwich Village, and left the city's jazz scene buzzing
with tales of a new star in the making. Among the jaws dropping were those of
Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff of Blue Note, and the latter left a vivid verbal
image of the experience (reprinted in the CD insert for The Best of Jimmy Smith: The Blue
Note Years) to accompany his many photographs of the organist: 'Jimmy
Smith was first with the mostest. I first heard Jimmy at Small's Paradise in January of 1956. It was his first gig
in New
York
- one week. He was a stunning sight. A man in convulsions, face contorted,
crouched over in apparent agony, his fingers flying, his foot dancing over the
pedals. The air was filled with waves of sound I had never heard before. The
noise was shattering. A few people sat around, puzzled, but impressed.'
Blue Note lost no
time in taking Smith into the studio for the first time in February, 1956, and
made it clear that their new signing was something special, issuing his debut
album under the emphatic title of A New Sound - A New Star: Jimmy Smith At The
Organ. The first volume, with Thornel Schwartz on guitar and drummer
Bay Perry, contained Smith's version of 'The Preacher' and a blistering version
of that great jam session perennial, ‘Lady, Be Good', while Volume 2, recorded
in March with Donald Bailey taking over the drum chair, opened with an even
more famous version of Dizzy Gillespie's The Champ'. The best of this up-tempo
material has a raw excitement which still shines through (the ballads are
rather overwrought), while Smith's extraordinary facility is matched by a
genuine improvisational flair. Schwarz sounds a shade uncomfortable when
soloing at these speeds, and comes across as rather tame by comparison with the
pyrotechnics erupting from the organ.
At this point,
Smith was still audibly influenced by Wild Bill Davis's big, hard-driving,
rather ornate style, and is still gripped by the sheer sonic possibilities of
the instrument's effects, sometimes to the point of overkill. He would evolve
an even more distinctive and influential voice in the ensuing years, when he
began to concentrate more specifically on the horn-influenced, single line
approach to soloing which he made his own. When I asked him about influences,
all of the players he cited were saxophonists -Charlie
Parker, Coleman Hawkins and Don Byas. Piano players, he said, 'can't give me
the shit I need'.”
[Around 1963,
Smith parted company with Blue Note] … leaving a legacy, which, while
undeniably formulaic, had not only established him beyond any serious
contention as the leading exponent of the Hammond B-3 in jazz, but had done
much to lay the foundations of the soul jazz sub-genre. By the time he left,
there were numerous organ players plying the same funky fare, but few of them
were able to match up to Smith as jazz improvisers. Having established, and
indeed patented, his style, Smith rarely departed much from it, but immediately
set about varying the kind of settings in which his music had been presented
when he joined his new label, Verve Records. Norman Granz had established the
label as a major jazz imprint, but he had sold it to MGM in 1960, and the presiding influence at
Verve in this period was producer Creed Taylor.”
Jimmy’s output for
Verve was very uneven, but while he was with
the label he did make some interesting recordings with guitarist Wes Montgomery
and some that placed him in a new, big band setting with imaginative and
commercially appealing arrangements by Oliver Nelson.”
Michael
Cuscuna
offered a succinct synopsis of Jimmy Smith’s rise to celebrity status in the Jazz world and his early years at Blue
Note in the following insert notes to
Jimmy’s Cool Blues Blue Note CD [7243 5 35587 2 7]. They are reprinted
below with his permission.
“Jimmy Smith's
story is an unusual one because he single-handedly introduced an instrument
into the modern jazz mainstream and created a sound and a style to go with it.
What is most unusual is that he did not even approach the instrument until he
was 28 years old, and he did not play a gig under his own leadership or record
an album until he was 29.
Born in Norristown, Pennsylvania on December 8, 1926, Jimmy studied piano from his father and
later attended the Orenstein School of Music in Philadelphia for three years, studying piano, bass,
harmony and theory. A succession of R&B gigs followed until 1955 when Smith
began considering the possibilities of the electric organ, having been inspired
by the work of Wild Bill Davis.
He made a deal
with a Philadelphia organ dealer to play on one of their
organs at one dollar an hour until he could afford to buy his own. When he did
buy his own instrument, he housed it in a warehouse near his residence and
worked out conscientiously everyday, systematically teaching himself the
instrument's capabilities and possibilities.
After a year of
sweat, he emerged with a style all his own and a facility that could be
described as nothing less than complete virtuosity. He formed his first trio
with guitarist Thornel Schwartz and drummer Bey Perry. Word of this phenomenon
came up to New York via musicians such as pianist Freddie Redd who happened to
catch Smith while traveling through Philly. A few initial gigs in New York,
uptown at Small's Paradise and downtown at Cafe Bohemia, and this man playing
organ was literally the talk of the town. Alfred Lion of Blue Note was quick to
check him out and even quicker to sign him. And from his first sessions, which
included "The Preacher" and "The Champ," Jimmy Smith's
records were commercial ana artistic hits.
Smith recorded for
Blue Note from February 1956 to February 1963. And the label put him in a
variety of settings during those seven years. He recorded with his working
trio, with singers Babs Gonzales and Bill Henderson, with rhythm section guests
Kenny Burrell, Art Blakey and Philly Joe Jones, in quartet setting with Lou
Donaldson or Stanley Turrentine and with all star sextets that included Lee
Morgan, Curtis Fuller, Tina Brooks, Hank Mobley, Donald Byrd, Blue Mitchell,
Jackie McLean, Ike Quebec and many others.
He seemed to shine
most on live recordings and dates with an assemblage or challenging horn men.
In this album, we have both. Small's Paradise, the legendary Harlem
club at 135th Street and 7th Avenue, has contributed to the history of jazz
since the twenties. It has special significance to Smith and his relationship
with Blue Note. The late Frank Wolff, Alfred Lion's partner in Blue Note,
wrote, "I first heard Jimmy at Small's Paradise in January of 1956. It was his first gig
in New
York—
one week. He was a stunning sight. A man in convulsions, face contorted,
crouched over in apparent agony, the fingers flying, his foot dancing over the
pedals. The air was filled with waves of sound that I had never heard before.
The noise was shattering. A few people sat around, puzzled, but impressed. He
came off the stand, smiling, the sweat dripping all over him. 'So what do you
think?' 'Yeah,' I said. That's all I could say. Alfred Lion had already made up
his mind."
"It was in
the cards," Wolff continued, "that Jimmy would succeed. He had
revamped the jazz organ and come up with a new sound. The sound has now been
adopted by almost all jazz organists, but his style remains his own. Right from
the start of his recording career, he was in full command of this very complex
and demanding machine, the Hammond organ. Apart from his incredible
technique, he had fire, feeling, beat, humor— all adding up to a highly
personal style. Everything was there, everything was right when he did The Champ'
and through the years so many other masterpieces. Jimmy Smith is a great
artist— and a beautiful guy."”
Jimmy Smith
reveled in the expanded soundscape provided by Oliver Nelson’s big band
arrangements as you can hear in the following audio track with its evocative
version of Walk on the Wild Side, Elmer
Bernstein’s theme from the film of the same name.
Tenor saxophonist Pete Christlieb performing Billy Strayhorn's "Raincheck" as arranged by Rob Pronk for The Metropole Orchestra as conducted by John Clayton.
He sang as though he had just
half a voice. No volume, it was all about confiding. Sometimes he croaked out
a line, next minute he'd released a word as though he was doubtful about
delivering it to the world at large. Bobby Troup never played to the gallery,
never went for the big one. Yet, despite - or rather because of - such
reluctance, allied to a lemon-twist quality that fell oddly on unaccustomed
ears, the man from Harrisburg,
PA.
still qualified as Mr. Cool, the vocal equivalent of a Paul Desmond alto solo
maybe. He sounded like no one else. And no one else has ever sounded like him.”
- Fred Dellar, Mojo Magazine
We wrote about composer,
pianist and vocalist Bobby Troup in an earlier feature about him and Julie
London which you can locate in the blog archives by going here.
Many of us first
“met” Bobby in the 1950s when he hosted the Emmy award winning ABC television
series, Stars of Jazz.
Can you imagine -
a regular, weekly series on a major television network devoted to Jazz?
It was cool and so
was Bobby.
Since it was based
in Los
Angeles, most of the groups that appeared on the show were associated with
was then labeled the “West Coast” school of Jazz.
There are two
wonderful books on this subject: Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz: Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960 and Robert Gordon, Jazz West Coast, The Los Angeles Jazz Scene of the 1950s.
A number of years
ago, The California Institute of Jazz made available to those in attendance at
its Spring 1999 4-day festival celebrating West Coast Jazz , a wonderful CD of
the music from the Stars of Jazz series.
Ken Poston, the
director of the institute, wrote the following in the insert booklet which
accompanied the compendium:
“This anthology has been
assembled exclusively for JAZZ
WEST COAST II, presented by the California Institute for the Preservation of
Jazz. All of the material comes from various Bobby Troup Stars of Jazz television
broadcasts. Stars of Jazz debuted in the summer of 1956 on KABC, Los
Angeles. It was unheard of in the mid 1950s to
televise jazz on a regular basis, but because of the dedication of producer
Jimmie Baker, program director Pete Robinson and host Bobby Troup the program
aired for over two years. It was sponsored by Budweiser and eventually went
from a local to network broadcast. The selections on this disc represent the
incredible range of artists that were beamed into your living room every night.”
—Ken Poston
Incidentally,
Ken’s organization, which now carries the name – The Los Angeles Jazz Institute
[LAJI] – continues to sponsor semi-annual, four day festivals, as well as,
one-day commemorative events. You can find out more about these programs by visiting
Ken’s website.
In addition to the
LAJI’s repository of goodies, Ray Avery, the late photographer and Jazz
recordings maven, was allowed to photograph the Stars of Jazz.
A compilation of
Ray photographs from these shows was published in 1998.
Cynthia T. Sesso,
who in her own right is a major authority on Jazz photography, licenses Ray’s
work along with the images of a number of other photographers who specialized
in Jazz.
Cynthia has been a
great friend to JazzProfiles over the years in allowing us to use photographs
by her clients on these pages.
You can find out
more about Cynthia and her work at her website.
She may also have copies of Ray’s book about Stars of Jazz still
available for sale.
Her are some
excerpts from the book’s introduction regarding how Ray came to be involved
with the show and Bobby Troup’s role as contained in an interviewthat
Ray gave to Will Thornbury.
“…, my photography
flowed naturally out of my involvement in my record store. At that time I
wasn't well known as a photographer. I just happened to be there and I had an
entrée because I was in the record business. Most of the small record companies
knew about me because I was carrying their product in my store, they would
invite me to record sessions. I was very seldom paid for a session, except if
they bought some photos. …
One day a friend
of mine asked if I'd seen "Stars Of Jazz" and I said I hadn't, so I
checked the newspaper and found out when it was going to be on. I just went
down, I think it was the second or third show, and I asked them if I could
photograph it. They were very friendly and said yes, of course, just be careful
and don't fall over any cords or walk in front of any cameras."
The host for all
but two Stars of Jazz episodes was Bobby Troup. He embodied the essence of the
show - straightforward, genuine and creative. Perhaps some of the show's
viewers from outside the jazz world were pulled in through Troup's
accessibility. He wore a crew cut. He was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in business and had written
many of the nation's favorite songs "Route 66", "Daddy",
"Lemon Twist", songs that crossed over from the jazz to the popular
charts. In addition to writing songs, he was also an active musician and would
perform often on the show.
"Bobby was
the perfect man", notes Jimmie Baker. 'There were some people who wanted
to have a bigger name, but nobody else could do it. Nobody else had the appeal
that Bobby had." Avery adds, "Bobby was a good musician, had written
great songs and he could be a great master of ceremonies. That's a combination
they couldn't find in anyone else. He spoke really well - he didn't want any of
those corny jazz lines in the script, which was good. He was a really good
interviewer. He made people feel so comfortable when they were there. And of course
they respected him as a musician, many of the sets featured Bobby at the
piano."
"All the
musicians had so much faith in the presentation of "Stars of
Jazz"," Troup says. "They thought it was the best jazz show
they'd ever seen. Did you know the story of how "Stars of Jazz" got
started? Pete Robinson, Jimmie Baker, and Bob Arbogast were all jazz buffs. I
mean they really loved jazz, and there was this executive, Seligman, graduated
from Harvard, Phi Beta Kappa, and they were on him constantly to let them do
this jazz show. Finally just to get them out of his hair, he said 'OK, I'll
give you a studio, a camera, you have to write it, you have to arrange every
musician, no more than scale, and I'll give you three weeks to run the show.' The
first show was Stan Getz. And they screened quite a few people and for some
reason or another they picked me to be the host. I'm sure glad they did. Every
night was a highlight, every night. I did the show for scale, it amounted to
$60 maybe $70 a night. When we went network I got scale for network, which was
more."
Avery adds, "in
those days there weren't the camera men that there are today. Now you go to a
concert and there's fifty people with cameras, but before, maybe half a dozen
of us would show up. Consequently, the photos taken in my early period are the
ones that are in demand now because not many people have them."”
Ironically, Seligman,
who authorized Stars of Jazz and was very boastful of the program when it won
an Emmy Award, never supported the show for a regular timeslot when it went
national on ABC.
Despite the
critical acclaim it received, the show was cancelled of January, 1959 due to
“low ratings.” Seligman was also responsible for ordering that the tapes of the
130 episodes of Stars of Jazz be erased so that they could be reused. After
all, each tape cost $400. Of course, what was recorded on them was priceless!
I guess “Those
whom the gods would destroy, they first make mad?”
Mercifully, Jimmy
Baker of the show’s production team was able to save 35mm’s and 81 of the early
kinescopes, all of which now reside for posterity in the UCLA Film Library.
More of the music
from the series is available on a commercial RCA CD - Bobby Troup Stars of Jazz
[74321433962] - from which we’ve drawn the music for the following tribute.
In his insert
notes to the recording, Pete Robinson, one of the show’s producers, wrote the
following:
“It has been
observed that People Who Live in Glass Houses Shouldn't Throw Stones, and since
Bobby Troup's particular glass house is a collective one, consisting of 17- and
24-inch television screens the country over, it is most important that his
participation in the realm of jazz be exemplary. It is.
As one playing of
the enclosed collection will attest, Mister Troup's qualities of tempo,
intonation, taste and interpretation place him in good stead as a jazz singer
of considerable merit. Nominations in the Down
Beat and Playboy polls add
further to his vocal status.
These fans,
however, will come as no surprise to the initiated. Bobby's work has had more
than a little exposure on records. What IS new is the extraordinary group of
jazz musicians who herewith are represented in tandem with Troup. Bobby's
presence as narrator of ABC-TV's "Stars of Jazz" for the past three
years has found him rubbing elbows with players from every corner of jazz. (A
total of 714 of them at this writing, for those who find security in
statistics.)
It was, then, only
a matter of time until an elite group of these jazzmen should come together
with Troup for the purpose of recording. When Shorty Rogers and Jimmy Rowles became available to
provide arrangements, the time was ripe.”
The audio track on
the video is Bobby singing Free and Easy which
he co-wrote with Henry Mancini. The trumpet solos are by Pete and Conte Candoli
and Jimmy Rowles wrote the arrangement.
