Harold Land - The Hard Bop Legacy [1928-2001] [From the Archives]

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

At a round-table discussion on West Coast jazz held in 1988, Buddy Collette offered a few words about fellow saxophonist Harold Land:

Harold"s been one of the finest tenor players I've heard and I have hardly heard a write-up about what this man has been doing through the years. . . . I've known him for 30 years, 35 years, and he's been playing jazz morning, noon and night. ... In New York he would have gotten more.

It is all too telling that Harold Land is best remembered in the jazz world for the brief time he was performing on the East Coast with the Clifford Brown/Max Roach Quintet. Land's thirty-five years of exceptional work since that time are often treated as an elaborate footnote to this early apprenticeship. The recordings, however, tell no lies. They document Land's major contributions to jazz both during and after his work with Brown and Roach. They reveal that he was one of the most potent voices on the West Coast scene throughout the period.

Those aware of Land's origins in Houston, Texas, where he was born on February 18, 1928, often hear a lingering Texas tenor sound in his playing. In fact, Land and his family spent only a few months in the Lone Star State. Soon his family moved to Arizona, and just a few years later they settled in San Diego. At an early age Land began taking piano lessons, at the instigation of his mother, but switched to tenor after hearing Coleman Hawkins's influential 1939 recording of "Body and Soul."

- Ted Gioia, West Coast Jazz, Modern Jazz in California, 1945-1960

"IN VIEW OF THE CURRENT VOGUE among musicians of such terms as "earthy" and "roots" when appraising the authenticity of a jazzman, I cannot resist noting the aptness of Harold Land's name in this alfresco context. His playing is as deeply rooted in jazz tradition as anyone's now in jazz. His capacity for communicating the blues, his wholeness of pulsation and his insistence on "keeping the emotion free" when he plays — all these elements make him a modernist whose language would not be alien to Sidney Bechet or Tommy Ladnier or Speckled Red."

- Nat Hentoff, Jazz author, critic and educator

"Harold Land is one of the most satisfying, soulful, exciting, inventive and highly personal tenors in jazz today."

- Tony Hall, British Jazz critic

“Looking back, it seems the quality and fervor of the music created a decade ago in Los Angeles was more significant than many of us then realized. Despite opportunities to hear some of these vigorous happenings via records, important musicians of the time were ignored partly because of a geographical handicap, and partly because lack of popular acceptance had driven much of their music underground. That the excitement of the period is not merely an hallucination induced by retrospect or nostalgia is proved beyond doubt with this reissue of The Fox [Contemporary S-7619;OJCCD-343-2]

In 1959, when it was recorded, Harold Land was one of the underrated, underground musicians gigging around Los Angeles. A soft-spoken man whose personality rarely suggests the incandescence of his instrumental sound….

His early influences were the big, warm tones of Coleman Hawkins and Lucky Thompson; later Charlie Parker's new concepts helped determine his direction....

Harold decided in 1954 to try his luck in Los Angeles. For several months there

were various odd jobs, none very rewarding.

The turning point came one night when Clifford Brown took his combo-leading partner, Max Roach, to hear Harold play in a session at Eric Dolphy's house. "Eric had known me since the San Diego days, and after I moved to L.A. we became good friends" Harold says. "He was beautiful. Eric loved to play anywhere, any hour, of the day or night. So did I. In fact, I still do!'

The unofficial audition led to Harold's being hired by Brown and Roach. As jazz night club audiences around the country were exposed to the freshness and vitality of Land's playing, he seemed to be well on his way; but in 1956 he had to leave the quintet and return to Los Angeles because of illness in the family.

If, during the balance of the 1950s, he had continued to tour with name groups, there is little doubt that his reputation would have been established sooner and much more firmly on an international level. Land is philosophical about it. "We were making progress in Los Angeles, even if nobody was aware of it. There wasn't much money, but we were having a lot of beautiful musical moments!'”-

- Leonard Feather, Jazz author, critic, record producer, insert notes to The Fox [Contemporary S-7619;OJCCD-343-2]

It seems that the only two people who did not lament tenor saxophonist Harold Land’s continuance with the initial version of the legendary quintet led by drummer Max Roach and trumpeter Clifford Brown were Harold and me.

When I asked Harold about his decision to quit the group and return to Los Angeles for family reasons, he said: “Do you know how often I get asked that question? I have no regrets. For the last 45 years I’ve been in the California sunshine near my family and friends. Going on the road is a drag, nothin’ but hard times. The work here has been all right over the years and I’m happy sleepin’ in my own bed at night.”

I really enjoyed having Harold’s unique tenor sax sound, a sound that was so different than many of the Lester Young inspired tones on the West Coast Jazz scene, within driving distance and it was always a gas to hear him play in Jazz clubs or concert venues as a member of Gerald Wilson or Oliver Nelson’s big bands or as the co-leader in groups he fronted with trumpeter Red Mitchell, vibist Bobby Hutcherson and trumpeter Blue Mitchell.

Harold Land was born in Houston, TX in 1928 but grew up in San Diego, and became interested in music while in high school; he began playing saxophone when he was about 16 years old. After gaining experience with local bands in San Diego he moved to Los Angeles, where he joined the quintet led by Clifford Brown and Max Roach as a replacement for Teddy Edwards. He was with this band for 18 months, but left to play with Curtis Counce (1956-8). Land then led his own groups, or shared leadership with Red Mitchell (1961-2) and Bobby Hutcherson (1967-71); in the 1950s and 1960s he also worked with Gerald Wilson. From 1975 to 1978 he led a quintet with Blue Mitchell, and thereafter has worked as a freelance, mainly in California but also touring overseas.

According to Mark Gardner in The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz:  “Land is a fluent modern stylist whose dry tone and individual manner of improvising at first owed little to the work of other musicians. In the late 1960s, however, his playing changed dramatically when he came under the influence of John Coltrane. His tone hardened and his phrasing became more brusque and jagged. His ability and daring are best displayed on his recordings as the leader of small groups including Carl Perkins (1958) and Elmo Hope (1959), and as a sideman with Thelonious Monk.”

We wanted to remember Harold on these pages with the following article by John Tynan who for many years was the West Coast regional editor for Downbeat magazine, because it is one of the earliest features written about Harold for a major Jazz magazine.

Sadly feature articles about Harold in Jazz publications were a rarity.

down beat

June 6, 1960

A VOICE IN THE WESTERN LAND

John Tynan

“Harold  Land, one of the  towering figures on contemporary-jazz tenor saxophone and standard-bearer of the new jazz on the west coast, isn't out to prove a thing to anybody but himself.

Living in Los Angeles since he left the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet some four years ago, the quiet, serious Land has been content to take his chances with the rest of the jazz branch of Local 47, AFM, and take his gigs where he finds them. Currently leading a quintet at Los Angeles' Masque club, he is decidedly optimistic about the present state of modern jazz in the southern slice of the Golden State.

Since his Roach-Brown days, Land said, the music and the musicians in the L.A. area have taken an upward turn. "It has improved," he commented, "especially in recent months. The few new jazz clubs that have opened have helped a lot; also the jazz concerts we've had recently have done much to re-stimulate interest."

During the last couple of years Los Angeles has become notorious among musicians as a jazz graveyard where night-club work is concerned. Land, however, somehow has managed to work with reasonable consistency in this drought.

"Having a place to play makes a world of difference to the musician — because just playing at home just doesn't make it at all," he commented dryly. "The musicians of Los Angeles have had so few places to play jazz; that's been one the biggest holdbacks. It meant that the few sessions that were going on would be dominated by just the few cats who showed up early and this made the sessions less enjoyable for the rest.

"Also, this situation made it very hard to keep a group together."

Land is frank in admitting his inclination to take things for granted in the development of jazz in Los Angeles. "There have been important changes in the playing of local musicians," he said, "but being so closely involved with my own playing, possibly I've been inclined to take these changes in stride."

In Land's view, Los Angeles musicians generally "seem  more conscientious than they were five years ago." Why? "It's rather hard to say, but for one

thing, there are countless musicians being influenced by what they hear from the east coast."

And is this increasing influence restricted only to the Negro jazzmen?

"No, I can hear this influence in the playing of both white and colored musicians."

In Land's view, Miles Davis and his more recent associates have been the most important influences on jazz musicians generally in recent years, "Miles, 'Trane, Cannonball and the 'Rhythm Section' (Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, and Red Garland) have been the main influence," he said.

Why?

"For one thing, it's in the way they work as a unit. This is outstanding. Then, too, each individual's playing is important. As a matter of fact, the individuals' influence has been the most important factor, in my opinion.

"You could possibly say that these are the most influential men in jazz today, as I see it."

While not exclusively signed with any record company, Land can count albums under his own name on Contemporary Records (Harold in the Land of

Jazz) and High Fidelity Records (The Fox). Moreover, he has played as side-man on more jazz LPs than he can count.

Today he sums up his aim succinctly: "I want to get said as much as I possibly can on the instrument in my own group or in any group where I could be happy. Or to be playing in a group where all the musicians would be completely in accord; to me this is the ultimate in playing."

"Yet," Land added with more than a suggestion of wistfulness, "that's only happened once—with the Max Roach-Clifford Brown Quintet. That was the happiest musical family I've ever been in. With Max, Clifford, Richie Powell, and George Morrow, every night was more exciting than the one before.

"It can happen again. But it hasn't happened completely as yet with the musicians I've been working with."

Land's search for the perfect empathy may well be as elusive as he contends, but observers have noted a remarkable musical rapport between the tenorist and the drummer with whom he apparently prefers to work, Frank Butler. Still, Land refuses to commit himself on this point for fear of offending other musicians.

Since his days with Roach and Brown, Land now feels that he has matured. "I have more to offer," he said. "I've learned a bit more since then."

For all his love of big-band sounds, he is happiest, he said, playing with small groups because of the blowing freedom this affords. But "a serious big band is beautiful," he remarked, "and I guess Gil Evans, Ernie Wilkins, and Quincy Jones are among my favorite arrangers. And don't leave out Gil Fuller and John Lewis and their charts for Dizzy Gillespie's big band years ago. This has been a long time ago, but age doesn't make any difference. They were good then, and they're still good."

Land is a typically west coast jazz son. Born in Houston, Texas, 31 years ago, he was reared and schooled in San Diego, Calif., which he left for Los Angeles eight years ago to seek his fortune. While pecuniary fortune may have eluded him thus far, he ranks today among the highest artistic earners in the top tenor bracket.”

On the following video, Harold is joined by Rolf Ericsson, trumpet, Carl Perkins, piano, Leroy Vinnegar, bass and Frank Butler, drums performing his original composition Smack Up.

Victor's Vibes [From the Archives]

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

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’ve put together a video montage of classic concept cars with a track that I think features him at his imaginative best.

This track 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.

4

Remembering Don Elliott [1926-1984]

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

“Don Elliott spread his talent across so many endeavors that he never received his due as an inventive Jazz artist. Elliott played trumpet, mellophone, and vibes, sang and acted.  He did all of that well-enough to work with George Shearing, Buddy Rich, Benny Goodman, Billy Taylor, and Teddy Wilson; record with Paul Desmond [and pianist Bill Evans]; appear in a Broadway musical; and collaborate in hit novelty recordings.”

- Orrin Keepnews

Looking back, there was a time when being able to play a pretty ballad was expected of every Jazz musician [drummers were coached to sit patiently through them while listening attentively and accompanying the proceedings with some quiet brushwork].

Some musicians took “pretty” to another level and made it downright beautiful.

Two such Jazz musicians were alto saxophonist Paul Desmond and multi-instrumentalist Don Elliott.

Each was a lyrical, sensitive and very expressive player and in combination they were exquisite. Both crafted solos that were witty, thoughtful and brimming with harmonic intelligence.

It was an inspired pairing, albeit a short-lived one.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to remember Don on these pages with another of our early-in-their-career features which references the recording with Paul Desmond as something which hadn’t as yet occurred.

“'I Don't Want To Be Typed Says Versatile Don Elliott” - By Dom Cerulli

[January 1956 Down Beat]

“DON ELLIOTT, who plays any musical instrument that hasn't got reeds or strings, is afraid of being typed.

"I'm worried about this thing becoming a gimmick," he said between sets at Jazzarama in Boston. "Actually, I enjoy playing each instrument." During his stay, he played only the mellophone, vibes, and bongos.

Turn him loose on a big bandstand, and Elliott can hold his own on valve trombone, tuba, trumpet, piano, baritone horn, accordion, and if they're all spoken for ... he will probably sing.

The 29-year-old jazzman started musically on the accordion at the age of 7. At Somerville, N. J., high school he played mellophone and baritone horn. Later, in a dance band, he found that there were enough trumpet players, so he stuck with the mellophone.

A difficult enough instrument to play straight, the mellophone is a diaphragm-stretcher to swing. But Elliott bounces along with it and its tone, which lies somewhere between that of a trombone and a French horn.

"YOU WON'T believe this," he said, "but I got onto vibes because I had two trumpets. When I got out of the army in 1946, I had this pair of trumpets and a buddy of mine had two sets of vibes. So we swapped."

Following the swap, Don gigged around until landing a spot with a quartet—but as a singer. In '48 and '49, he was with Hi, Lo, Jack, and the Dame. He became a singer again for a recent Bethlehem record date, and plans to explore that field a bit more.

Eventually, Don would like to front a big band with what he terms "a sound of beautiful simplicity, if there's such a term."

Elliott had a band in 1953, but despite some agency interest, he was told he came along about 10 years too late. "But things seem to be picking up a bit as far as big bands go, and maybe someday I'll be able to put together a commercial but very interesting sounding dance band."

He has three favorite big bands, "Basie for jump, Thornhill for ballads, and Les Brown, in the middle."

RIGHT NOW, Don indicated that given his choice he would prefer to play concerts with his group. "I think any jazz musician prefers concerts. You start with the knowledge that the audience is there specifically to hear jazz. In some clubs, it's difficult to get across to the audience."

Elliott's immediate plans include cutting some fugues with altoist Paul Desmond and doing some woodshedding with his trumpet. ;

"That's my favorite horn," he said. "I've got to pick it up again one of these days."

Scooter Pirtle published an extremely thorough profile on Don’s career in The Middle Horn Reader. Here’s an excerpt after which you’ll find a video montage with Don performing Everything Happens to Me with Paul Desmond.

Don Elliott: He Was a Gentlemen, too

by Scooter Pirtle

Originally published in 1994 in “The Middle Horn Reader”

During his illustrious career, Don Elliott performed jazz as a vocal musician, vibraphonist, trombonist, trumpeter, flugelhornist and percussionist. He pioneered the art of multi-track recording, composed countless prize-winning advertising jingles, wrote music for hit Broadway shows, prepared music scores for motion pictures, and built a thriving production company. Incidentally, he was also the greatest mellophonist who ever lived.

The Early Years

Don Elliott was born Don "Helfman" in Somerville, New Jersey on October 21,1926.1 The son of a silent film theater organist and vaudevillian pianist, Don became a music student of his father at the age of four. Don's father, Albert, was somewhat of a sensation in Somerville. A gifted organist, he took pride in his ability to improvise musical backgrounds for silent films at the local movie palaces.

Don's first instrument was the piano accordion, a gift from his father. Albert realized the potential of his son and frequently informed Don's mother, Nettie, that Don would be famous someday. Tragically, Dan's father died of a heart attack in 1933 at the age of 36.

Don continued to use his natural music abilities throughout his early childhood by performing for various clubs and charity groups. By age 11, Don was a seasoned performer. Within a year he accepted his first professional "gig" playing trumpet at a New Year's Eve party.

You can view the complete article by going here:

"Nat Hentoff [1925- 2017] - A Link to Jazz's Founding Fathers"

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

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles wanted to say “Goodbye” one more time on these pages to Nat Hentoff, a Jazz author and critic who has enlightened and inspired us many times over the years, this time in the form of the following piece by Terry Teachout that appeared in The Wall Street Journal on January 10, 2017.

“When Nat Hentoff died on Saturday at age 91, one of his sons broke the news on Twitter. That might well have amused Mr. Hentoff, a technological Luddite* [see below] who never abandoned the typewriter and never established a social-media beachhead.

He might also have been amused — if grimly so — by the fact that many of his obituaries devoted more space to his latter-day career as a civil libertarian than to the writings about jazz with which he made his journalistic name. Sad to say, that makes perfect sense. Not only had the music that Mr. Hentoff loved best (he died listening to the records of Billie Holiday) ceased to be central to the American cultural conversation by the time of his death, but he was a First Amendment absolutist who lived to see free speech under siege in his native land, which explains why his impassioned writings about it should now loom so large in memory. Still, few who know his work at all well are in doubt that he will be remembered longest as one of the foremost jazz commentators of the 20th century.

To be sure, the word “commentator” doesn’t quite convey the nature and range of Mr. Hentoff’s jazz-related activities. Though he wrote his share of concert and record reviews in his youth, he wasn’t exactly a jazz critic, nor was he a scholar or a musician. Instead, he was something equally important—an intelligent enthusiast with good taste and a receptive ear. The National Endowment for the Arts summed him up well when, in 2004, it honored Mr. Hentoff with one of its Jazz Master awards, describing him as a “jazz advocate.” In that capacity he was nonpareil: No writer did more for jazz.

Mr. Hentoff himself believed that “if anything I’ve written about this music lasts, it will be the interviews I’ve done with the musicians for more than 50 years….My hope is that some of them become part of jazz histories.” That was just what happened. One of the last living links to the founding fathers of jazz, he knew and interviewed most of the great musicians whose paths he crossed through the years, and a considerable number of the familiar quotes and anecdotes that long ago passed into the common stock of jazz reference can be can be traced back to his pieces. It was Mr. Hentoff, for example, to whom Miles Davis praised Louis Armstrong in these famous words: “You know you can’t play anything on a horn that Louis hasn’t played — not even modern.”

In addition to his interviews, Hentoff wrote the liner notes for countless classic jazz albums, including Davis’s “Sketches of Spain,” “Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk,” John Coltrane’s “Giant Steps,” Duke Ellington’s “In a Mellotone,” Bill Evans’s “New Jazz Conceptions,” Herbie Hancock’s “Speak Like a Child” and Charles Mingus’s “Pithecanthropus Erectus.” These, too, are crammed full of oft-quoted remarks that were originally made to Mr. Hentoff by the musicians who recorded them. Nor did he limit himself to merely writing notes: Mr. Hentoff also produced noteworthy albums by such celebrated jazzmen as Coleman Hawkins and Pee Wee Russell.

Jazz was not Mr. Hentoff’s only musical enthusiasm. He wrote about many other kinds of artists, among them Ray Charles,Bob Dylan and Bob Wills, for the Journal and virtually every other newspaper and magazine of consequence. But it was jazz that spoke most strongly to him, and it may well be that his signal achievement as an advocate was to help choose the roster of musicians who performed on “The Sound of Jazz,” the legendary 1957 TV special on which the illustrious likes of Hawkins, Holiday, Monk, Russell, Count Basie,Roy Eldridge,Gerry Mulligan,Ben Webster and Lester Young were seen playing in a casual jam-session setting. “For me, it was a jazz fan’s fantasy come true,” Mr. Hentoff recalled 50 years after the show first aired on CBS. It was also a priceless gift to posterity: To this day “The Sound of Jazz,” which can be viewed on YouTube, continues to be widely regarded as the finest jazz program ever telecast.

Mr. Hentoff himself came to feel that “The Sound of Jazz” was “the most important thing” he ever did. Maybe so, but he did too many things too well to rank them, and though he couldn’t play a note, there was nothing inappropriate about his being dubbed a “jazz master” by the NEA. He served jazz selflessly, and all those who love it as he did are the poorer for his passing.”

*[Luddite = a member of any of the bands of English workers who destroyed machinery, especially in cotton and woolen mills, that they believed was threatening their jobs (1811–16); a person resisting technological progress.]

Nat Hentoff, Journalist and Social Commentator, Dies at 91

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

Back in the blog’s earliest days, I wanted to do a compilation of various writings about the late baritone saxophonist, composer-arranger and bandleader Gerry Mulligan.

One of these essays, not surprisingly given the breadth and scope of his writings about Jazz, was by Nat Hentoff.

Off I went, looking for a quick digital connect to ask his permission to use the Mulligan piece.

It was not to be - quick - that is, because Nat is not “connected:” no email, social networking, website, et al.

Someone, who asked me not to reveal my source [?], gave me his phone number.

So I called him.

He wasn’t in and I left him a voicemail explaining what I wanted.

A few days went by and I was in the middle of a house painting chore when the phone rang and it was Nat.

After saying, “Yes, of course,” to my request for copyright permission, he began asking me a series of questions about my background in the music.

After a few descriptive phrases he proffered a comment to the effect: “Oh, you’re a Left Coast [i.e. West Coast] guy.”

So while I held a dripping paint brush over a paint can, Nat launched into an informed discourse about a style of music and a group of musicians he had never heard perform first hand on the “Left” Coast,” but whom he had only heard and met over the years in clubs and festivals in Boston, New York and Newport, RI.

His knowledge on the subject was amazing as were the strength of his opinions.

His favorite was Dave Brubeck whom he referred to as “an original who shouldn’t be left out of the list of those influencing other pianists who were his contemporaries or that followed him. Brubeck was right up there with Art Tatum, Teddy Wilson, Nat Cole or Bud Powell.”

I couldn’t believe my ears! I had always thought that Dave Brubeck never garnered the credit he deserved for helping to shape some aspects of the styles of everyone from Bill Evans to Herbie Hancock to McCoy Tyner, but here I was hearing it from an East Coast based Jazz author and critic!

But then, how surprising was this considering the fact that over the years, I’ve probably learned more about Jazz from Nat Hentoff than from any, other man alive.

Which brings me to this obituary. Nat died on January 7, 2017. He was 91 years old.

By ROBERT D. McFADDEN, New York Times, JAN. 7, 2017

“Nat Hentoff, an author, journalist, jazz critic and civil libertarian who called himself a troublemaker and proved it with a shelf of books and a mountain of essays on free speech, wayward politics, elegant riffs and the sweet harmonies of the Constitution, died on Saturday at his home in Manhattan. He was 91.

His son Nicholas said he was surrounded by family members and listening to Billie Holiday when he died.

Mr. Hentoff wrote for The Village Voice for 50 years and also contributed to The New Yorker, The Washington Post, Down Beat magazine and dozens of other publications. He wrote more than 35 books — novels, volumes for young adults and nonfiction works on civil liberties, education and other subjects.

The Hentoff bibliotheca reads almost like an anthology: works by a jazz aficionado, a mystery writer, an eyewitness to history, an educational reformer, a political agitator, a foe of censors, a social critic. He was — like the jazz he loved — given to improvisations and permutations, a composer-performer who lived comfortably with his contradictions, although adversaries called him shallow and unscrupulous and even his admirers sometimes found him infuriating, unrealistic and stubborn.

In the 1950s, Mr. Hentoff was a jazz critic in Manhattan, frequenting crowded, smoky night clubs where musicians played for low pay and audiences ran hot and cold and dreamy. “I knew their flaws as well as their strengths,” he recalled, referring to the jazz artists whose music he loved, many of whom he befriended, “but I continued to admire the honesty and courage of their art.”

In the 1960s and ’70s, he wrote books for young adults, nonfiction works on education, magazine profiles of political and religious leaders and essays on racial conflicts and the Vietnam War. He became an activist, too, befriending Malcolm X and joining peace protests and marches for racial equality.

In the 1980s and ’90s, he produced commentaries and books on censorship and other constitutional issues; murder mysteries; portraits of educators and judges; and an avalanche of articles on abortion, civil liberties and other issues. He also wrote a volume of memoirs, “Speaking Freely” (1997).

His writing was often passionate, even inspirational. Much of it was based on personal observations, and some critics said it was not deeply researched or analytic. His nonfiction took in the sweep of an era of war and social upheaval, while many of his novels caught the turbulence, if not the character, of politically astute young adults.

While his sympathies were usually libertarian, he often infuriated leftist friends with his opposition to abortion, his attacks on political correctness and his criticisms of gay groups, feminists, blacks and others he accused of trying to censor opponents. He relished the role of provocateur, defending the right of people to say and write whatever they wanted, even if it involved racial slurs, apartheid and pornography.

He had a firebrand’s face: wreathed in a gray beard and a shock of unruly hair, with dark, uncompromising eyes. Once, a student asked what made him tick. “Rage,” he replied. But he said it softly, and friends recalled that his invective, in print or in person, usually came wrapped in gentle good humor and respectful tones.

Nathan Irving Hentoff was born in Boston on June 10, 1925, the son of Simon and Lena Katzenberg Hentoff. His parents were Jewish immigrants from Russia, and he grew up in the tough Roxbury section in a vortex of political debate among Socialists, anarchists, Communists, Trotskyites and other revolutionaries. He learned early how to rebel.

In 1937, on Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement and fasting, the 12-year-old Nat sat on his porch on a street leading to a synagogue and slowly ate a salami sandwich. It made him sick, and the action outraged his father. He had not done it to scandalize passing Jews who glared at him, he said in a memoir, “Boston Boy” (1986). “I wanted to know how it felt to be an outcast,” he wrote. “Except for my father’s reaction and for getting sick, it turned out to be quite enjoyable.”

He attended Boston Latin, the oldest public school in America, and read voraciously. He discovered Artie Shaw and fell passionately for Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, Duke Ellington, Fats Waller and other jazz legends. As more modern styles of jazz emerged, Mr. Hentoff also embraced musicians like Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus and, later, Ornette Coleman and Cecil Taylor.

At Northeastern University, he became editor of a student newspaper and turned it into a muckraker. When it dug up a story about trustees backing anti-Semitic publications, the university shut it down. Mr. Hentoff and members of his staff resigned, but he graduated in 1946 with high honors and a lasting devotion to the First Amendment.

After several years with a Boston radio station, he moved to New York in 1953 and covered jazz for Down Beat until 1957.

He was one of the most prolific jazz writers of the 1950s and ’60s, providing liner notes for countless albums as well as writing or editing several books on jazz, including “Hear Me Talkin’ to Ya: The Story of Jazz as Told by the Men Who Made It” (1955), which he edited with Nat Shapiro. It was a seminal work of oral history.

In 1958, he was a founding editor of The Jazz Review, an influential publication that lasted until 1961. In 1960, he began a notable, if brief, career as a record producer, supervising sessions by Mingus, Max Roach and others for the Candid label.

Around the same time, he began a freelance career that took him into the pages of Esquire, Harper’s, Commonweal, The Reporter, Playboy and The New York Herald Tribune.

In 1958, he began writing for The Village Voice, the counterculture weekly. It became a 50-year gig, despite changes of ownership and editorial direction. Veering from jazz, he wrote weekly columns on civil liberties, politics, education, capital punishment and other topics, all widely syndicated to newspapers.

In January 2009, he was laid off by The Voice, but he said he would continue to bang away on the electric typewriter in his cluttered Greenwich Village apartment, producing articles for United Features and Jewish World Review and reflections on jazz and other music for The Wall Street Journal.

Citing the journalists George Seldes and I. F. Stone as his muses, he promised in a farewell Voice column to keep “putting on my skunk suit at other garden parties.”

He wrote for The New Yorker from 1960 to 1986 and for The Washington Post from 1984 to 2000. He also wrote for The Washington Times and other publications. For years, he lectured at schools and colleges, and he was on the faculties of New York University and the New School.

Mr. Hentoff’s first book, “The Jazz Life” (1961), examined social and psychological aspects of jazz. Later came “Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J. Muste” (1963), a biography of the pacifist, and “The New Equality” (1964), on the role of white guilt in racial reforms.

“Jazz Country” (1965) was the first of a series of novels for young adults. It explored the struggles of a young white musician breaking into the black jazz scene. Others included “This School Is Driving Me Crazy” (1976), “Does This School Have Capital Punishment?” (1981) and “The Day They Came to Arrest the Book” (1982). They addressed subjects like the military draft, censorship and the generation gap, but some critics called them polemics in the mouths of characters.

Many of Mr. Hentoff’s later books dealt with the Constitution and those who interpreted and acted on it. In “Living the Bill of Rights” (1998), he profiled Justice William O. Douglas of the Supreme Court, the educator Kenneth Clark and others as he explored capital punishment, prayer in schools, funding for education, race relations and other issues.

In “Free Speech for Me — but Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other” (1992), he attacked not only school boards that banned books but also feminists who tried to silence abortion foes or close pornographic bookstores; gay rights groups that boycotted Florida orange juice because it’s spokeswoman, Anita Bryant, crusaded against gay people; and New York officials who tried to bar South Africa’s rugby team because it represented the land of apartheid.

In 1995, Mr. Hentoff received the National Press Foundation’s award for lifetime achievement in contributions to journalism, and in 2004, he was named one of six Jazz Masters by the National Endowment for the Arts, the first non-musician to win the honor.

Mr. Hentoff was the subject of an award-winning 2013 biographical film, “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step,” produced and directed by the journalist David L. Lewis, which played in theaters across the country.

Mr. Hentoff’s first two marriages, to Miriam Sargent in 1950 and to Trudi Bernstein in 1954, ended in divorce. His third wife, the former Margot Goodman, whom he married in 1959, is a columnist and an author of essays, reviews and short stories.

Besides his wife and his son Nicholas, he is survived by two daughters, Jessica and Miranda; a son, Thomas; a step-daughter, Mara Wolynski Nierman; a sister, Janet Krauss; and 10 grandchildren.”