Psst! Pssst!

If any of you have ever wondered
why
a ride cymbal can splash and shake
and shudder
but can’t go psst! pssst!
the way a hi-hat can

and what the difference
is between grace notes
and ghost notes

and how fingers
can do a cross stick backbeat
all in a 16th note shuffle

and why oh why oh why do
jazz lovers scorn drum machines ...

... then percussion master Bernard "Pretty" Purdie is here to explain it all:

yeaaahh ... pssst! psssst!
 

And a short poem from Langston Hughes:

Langston Hughes on front steps of
his home in Harlem, 1958.
Robert W. Kelley/Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

Midnight Dancer
(To a Black Dancer in "The Little Savoy")

Wine-maiden
Of the jazz-tuned night,
Lips
Sweet as purple dew,
Breasts
Like the pillows of all sweet dreams,
Who crushed
The grapes of joy
And dripped their juice
On you?

Silent Night

To be loved means to be ablaze. To love is: to cast light with inexhaustible oil. To be loved is to pass away; to love is to last ... Rainer Maria Rilke



Tonight, on Christmas Eve, I wish all my blog friends much light, inexhaustible oil, love and everlasting hope on this holiday and always.

Conversation Piece



Rex Stewart, photo by
David Redfern/Redferns, Gettyimages

Cornetist Rex Stewart was a mainstay of the Duke Ellington orchestra in the 1930s and 40s and much loved in the jazz world for the half-valve effects and the playful and plaintive muted wah-wah blowing he brought to his wonderful soloing. Much less known or heralded was his skill as a screenwriter. This neglect has now been righted by the BBC-produced video vignette I am embedding below, featuring dialogue written by Rex Stewart. Though only a few minutes long, the piece manages to combine intrigue and suspense, humor and tension in a domestic drama, which I am sure many of us can relate to: a bit of bathos, a peck of pathos, more than a touch of tension, a lot of fun and some riveting husband and wife dialogue.

I suggest you turn up the volume on your speakers and watch the short clip in the full screen version (by clicking on the rectangular icon all the way on the right near the bottom of the video) ...



Imagine Ingmar Bergman's Scenes from a Marriage if the Swedish master had signed Rex Stewart up to do the screenplay. As I scan my eyes over my prized collection of hundreds and thousands of jazz records and CDs, I am thrilled by the possibilities this brilliant little film opens up. Indeed, I don't think that María and I will ever have another spat again without first putting one of those records on the turntable.

There is an interesting website on the film, including the script, director's notes and more. Click here to see it.
I first saw this film on Donna's Elements of Jazz website which I learned of through National Public Radio's A Blog Supreme / NPR Jazz (highly recommended).

Eternity is in love with the productions of time ...

If the author of this quote, William Blake, was right, eternity must be building up a great fondness for Esperanza Spalding. The young bassist, vocalist and composer has certainly been making quite a splash in the jazz world in the last couple of years. She has a fresh and soulful command of the acoustic bass, impeccable time, a beautiful voice and singing style, and is a compelling performer, seemingly wise much beyond her years (just turned 26).

The PBS art blog that I follow and am always eager to recommend recently featured the young artist from Portland, Oregon. I am embedding a clip below of her performance of a piece called 'Little Fly', in which she sets William Blake's poem 'The Fly' to music.

So, what do you think: how cool is Esperanza (whose name means "hope" in Spanish)? Here is the Blake poem.

I was particularly taken by her explanation of how she came to compose this piece, a poem that she pasted up on her desk and then macerated in her imagination for years. You can hear for yourselves in the video below ...

I'll close with a well-known and always timely scrap of verse from William Blake ...

To see a world in a grain of sand

and heaven in a wild flower

Hold infinity in the palms of your hand

and eternity in an hour.

Morning ...

<>

Mary Oliver and Percy — photo by Rachel Giese Brown

Today is the birthday of the cherished poetess Mary Oliver (born September 10, 1935). More than a poet, she strikes me as a language of her own, a way of being in this world, a type of Rosetta Stone that can help us see and translate the hieroglyphics nature writes in us and grasp the endless flow of bountiful gifts we receive from her. We need only look and feel and be open to being perpetually amazed. Below I am posting her Morning Poem.

For this birthday banquet, I have teamed her up with Yusef Lateef, the 'gentle giant', and his soulful rendering of his composition Morning. Click on play to listen while reading Morning Poem below.

Enjoy and happy birthday, Mary...

Morning Poem

Every morning
the world
is created.
Under the orange

sticks of the sun
the heaped
ashes of the night
turn into leaves again

and fasten themselves to the high branches ---
and the ponds appear
like black cloth
on which are painted islands

of summer lilies.
If it is your nature
to be happy
you will swim away along the soft trails

for hours, your imagination
alighting everywhere.
And if your spirit
carries within it

the thorn
that is heavier than lead ---
if it's all you can do
to keep on trudging ---

there is still
somewhere deep within you
a beast shouting that the earth
is exactly what it wanted ---

each pond with its blazing lilies
is a prayer heard and answered
lavishly,
every morning,

whether or not
you have ever dared to be happy,
whether or not
you have ever dared to pray.

      from Dream Work (1986) by Mary Oliver
      © Mary Oliver

I also recommend a New York Times article from July of last year titled "The Land and Words of Mary Oliver, the Bard of Provincetown".

A special added treat in that article is the slideshow of beautiful photos of Mary Oliver's beloved Cape Cod with the audio of Mary reading two of her own poems: At Blackwater Pond and The Sun. What could be finer? I suggest you view the full screen version to luxuriate in the images as you listen to her guide us by the hand into the lake and the setting and rising sun.

San Juan tragedy

Today I was going to continue the previous post on personal recollections of la vispera de San Juan (Saint John's Eve), but tragic events in Castelldefels, a town on the outskirts of Barcelona, have erased that idea. Last night at 11:30 pm a trainload of teenagers and youngsters got off at the station on their way to the San Juan bonfire and festivities. Apparently, on seeing the crowded pedestrian passageway under the tracks a large group of them imprudently decided to cross over the tracks, where many of them were hit by a speeding train. At last count there were a dozen dead and many injured.

Obviously, I haven't the heart to continue a piece on the romantic magic of this night. Nor can I find words to offer the family and friends of those poor young souls. When all else fails, I curl up in the lap of a soulful song. I leave you with Abbey Lincoln...

Booked through Fall, stealing away in Spring ...

Click below to hear Hank Jones and Charlie Haden playing "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child".



Piano great Hank Jones has just passed on at the ripe age of 91. It is normally supposed to be 'ripe old age', but anyone who has had the good fortune to see Hank Jones' piano playing of late would surely agree he was 'old' only in musical wisdom, wistful melodic wit and depth of soul.

I will not go into details on the life and long professional career (nearly eight decades from the age of 13!) of this legendary jazz man. For a 'proper' obituary and remembrance you can go read Peter Keepnews at the New York Times or Patrick Jarenwattananon at A Blog Supreme / NPR Jazz, with plenty of worthwhile links. And more will surely follow.

Hank Jones played with a nearly endless list of jazz luminaries: Coleman Hawkins, Billy Eckstine, Benny Goodman, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane... In the last few decades he continued to develop and blossomed as a leader in his own right, while remaining one of the most sought after pianists demanded by the top names in jazz. He has backed vocalists from Ella Fitzgerald to Frank Sinatra to Diana Krall and many, many more. Though set to celebrate his 92nd birthday on July 31, he remained incredibly active; the NY Times obituary reports his schedule was booked full through Fall.

But Hank has now slipped off to join his brother Elvin Jones, the great drummer forever associated with John Coltrane and leader of his own combos, and Thad Jones, trumpeter, composer, arranger and co-founder/leader of the Thad Jones – Mel Lewis Jones big band. Some serious soulful swinging at the pearly gates tonight.

Curious piece of jazz trivia: If you think you have never heard Hank Jones playing the piano, you are probably mistaken — Hank Jones was the pianist who backed Marilyn Monroe in her highly celebrated steamy rendition of "Happy Birthday, Mr. President" sung for JFK at Madison Square Garden in 1962.

I close with a photo, not of Marilyn, but of a gorgeous soul and beautiful, dearly appreciated musician, Hank Jones, taken last summer in Spain at the San Sebastián Jazz Festival.

Hank Jones in San Sebastián, July 2009. Photo: Rafa Rivas/AFP/Getty Images

Musical credits. The piece "Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child" is from the album “Steal Away — Spiritual, Hymns and Folk Songs”, with Hank Jones on piano and Charlie Haden playing bass. Recorded in 1994 on Verve Records – Polydor.

Soul on soul ... the Mary Lou Williams Centennial

W. Eugene Smith/Time & Life Pictures

Today I wanted to make at least a brief mention of the 100th birthday of jazz great Mary Lou Williams, born one fine Spring morning on May 8, 1910. The NPR jazz site, "A Blog Supreme" is commemorating this singular pianist, composer, arranger, bandleader and educator in a worthy tribute written by Patrick Jarenwattananon that you can find here.

Perhaps no other musician in the history of jazz can be so rightfully said as Mary Lou Williams to have spanned every major era of jazz and continued to evolve through them so richly, never becoming locked into any one style or period. From ragtime, boogie woogie, stride and blues piano to the swing era, onto bebop and through to post-bop and beyond, she continued to grow and flow with the music, her life, composing and playing becoming a lustrous and fecund compendium of jazz history. "Mary Lou Williams is perpetually contemporary" is how Duke Ellington described her permanent freshness and openness to the music's new currents. "Her writing and performing are and have always been just a little ahead throughout her career...  her music retains, and maintains, a standard of quality that is timeless. She is like soul on soul" (Duke Ellington, Music is My Mistress).

"I’m the only living musician that has played all the eras.” That was certainly not an idle boast she made in 1978, three years before her death, on the first-ever Marian McPartland's "Piano Jazz" radio show. To hear that delightful interview, master class and performance from the debut Piano Jazz series (still going strong today, 32 years later), visit the link at NPR here.

History of Jazz by Mary Lou Williams, 1979

Williams did not just play in and survive these different periods. She was a major presence and influence in all of them, although her importance was always felt more by her fellow musicians than by the general public. She turned professional in her early teens, playing stride piano to help support her 10 step-brothers and sisters. By the age of 15 she had already played with Duke Ellington in one of his earliest bands, the Washingtonians, and been noticed by and gigged with Louis Armstrong, before becoming composer, arranger and pianist in Andy Kirk's "Twelve Clouds of Joy". Soon her composing and arranging skills were much sought after by Ellington, Benny Goodman, Earth "Father" Hines, Jimmy Lunceford (for whom she wrote "What's your story morning glory?" in the 1930s) and other giants of the swing era.

Always in the right place at the right time, she moved to Harlem in the early 1940s and was a major albeit behind-the-scenes mover in the birth of bebop. Her apartment on Convent Avenue was the unofficial "bebop salon", where she was a friend, teacher and mentor to the pioneering bop pianists, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, who would stop by her place on a nearly daily basis, along with Charlie Parker (whom she had met back in Kansas City "when he was in knee pants"), Dizzy Gillespie, Errol Garner and a stellar list of luminaries of the "Harlem post-Renaissance" revolution.

In the 1950s, after converting to Catholicism, she retired from public performances and active career as musician to take up her spiritual pursuits and charitable work. Years later, Dizzy Gillespie and others convinced her to return to music. She drew on many of the elements from all those periods to pen some of her best known sacred works, including 'Mass for Peace' —which ever since Alvin Ailey choreographed it for a major work of his dance company has been known as 'Mary Lou's Mass'— and 'Black Christ of the Andes', from which I embed 'Praise the Lord' below...



Praise the lord, indeed. I have sometimes wondered if I had heard music like this in church as a child (I actually remember mass in Latin!), whether I would have ever departed the church for the shimmering stars of astronomy and the ambrosia clouds of Mount Olympus.

To hear two beautiful live 1970s performances by Mary Lou Williams, visit this link for the radio program JazzSet, hosted by Dee Dee Bridgewater.

* * *

Painting of Lena Horne by Merryl Jaye, who has
a wonderful collection of jazz portraits at her site.

As I write this post about Mary Lou Williams, it is with sadness that I note the passing of Lena Horne. For an earlier post featuring the great lady of jazz, click here.

... let's just go walking in the rain

Billie Holiday, age 2 (1917)

Don't threaten me with love, baby. Let's just go walking in the rain — Billie Holiday

The great Billie Holiday was born 95 years ago today, on April 7th 1915. In my personal pantheon, there has never been a greater singer in sheer capacity to transfix and move the listener. Much beloved by her fellow musicians, her own musicianship was of the highest order and her raconteurship emotionally riveting. The jewels she hewed from the mountains of despair that formed the landscape of her life still radiate light today.

For some reason, I cannot look at the moon without seeing Lady Day's face. I do not remember when or why this began and only know that this is so and has been for practically all of my adult life.

Billie Holiday — Evening Standard/Getty Images

Many years ago when I saw filmed images of Billie Holiday for the first time I was struck by how graceful, composed and relaxed she seemed when she sang. Before that I had relied on album cover photos and my imagination as to how she must have looked while performing. Given the tremendous emotional force of her records, I guess I had conjured up writhing images of a contorted, grimacing face, eyes closed tight, head thrown back, mouth locked in the siren's rictus. This was before I had learned that valuable lesson enunciated by Sarah Vaughan when she said that the great artists always seem to be holding something back.

But in this performance, Billie Holiday just seemed to be sitting on a bar stool, cool, calm and naturally, jes talkin' atcha. I was struck by the realization that everything I had heard on all those vinyls was just her way of talking. But, oh, the things she had to say ...

Painting by Merryl Jaye

I embed that famous clip below, taken from 'The Sounds of Jazz' TV show which first aired in December 1957, with an incredible lineup of jazz greats accompanying her on Fine and Mellow, one of the few songs Billie Holiday wrote herself. The recording was made around a year and a half before she died. Her voice was not at its finest, but yet this is considered by many to be the finest piece of jazz ever recorded.  One of the tenor sax players on the date was Lester Young, with whom she had been, for many years, especially "close". He was the man who christened her 'Lady Day' and she was the first to call him 'Prez', the nicknames by which they came to be known by their fellow musicians and for posterity.

For me, and many others, the highlight is the expression on Lady Day's face as Lester Young begins to blow his gently simmering blues, the way she nods and shakes her head as the Prez hits that sweet spot. Take a look and listen (Lester Young's solo is the second one, after Ben Webster's) ...

white gardenias sway

under a mesmeric moon

so fine and mellow

The lineup of musicians is given in the introduction by the show's host and producer Robert Herridge. The order of the solos is:
Ben Webster - tenor sax
Lester Young - tenor sax
Vic Dickenson - trombone
Gerry Mulligan - baritone sax
Coleman Hawkins - tenor sax
Roy Eldridge - trumpet

Of unstilted youth and gracious age ...

A few posts ago, I recalled how Proust likened aging to walking on living stilts that keep on growing — the view improves, but everything begins to wobble. I find this notion of the heightened vantage point and perception that comes with our mature years, disquietingly accompanied by awareness of our own mortality, to be strikingly expressed in the following poem.

It was written in 1968 by Jaime Gil de Biedma, the Spanish writer born and died in Barcelona (1929-1990). You can find a brief bio at this link: Gil de Biedma.

I WILL NEVER BE YOUNG AGAIN

That life was a serious affair
only later one becomes aware
– like all youth, I came onstage
to take life by storm

I would leave my mark
And strut away amid applause
– aging, dying, were but
the dimensions of the theater

But time has shrunk behind me now
and the unpleasant truth emerges:
ageing, dying
is the lone plot in this show


For those of you who can read Spanish, you will certainly prefer the original over the translation (mine). I include them both side by side:

For more of his work (in Spanish only), I recommend the A media voz site, where you can read and hear many of his poems.

But I certainly do not want to end this post on a down note, lamenting the merciless passage of time. The way we carry this growing knowledge and intimacy with our final destiny need not be a call to morbid self-pity. There is a triumph of sorts to be wrested from this demise.

Take the graceful example of Lena Horne. I will not go into her biography, there are better sources out there for the details of youthful beauty and deep talent, of how she had to overcome the stupidest of obstacles placed in her path by petty and bigoted minds. The best would be to see the recording of her 1981 Broadway show "Lena: The Lady and her Music".

Originally scheduled to run four weeks, the show was a huge success and ran for more than a year, closing on her 65th birthday on June 30, 1982. Thankfully, a few days later, the entire show was performed again and recorded. Below you can see and hear her stirring version of "Yesterday, When I was Young".

Take in how her voice lingers with the breeze on the candle flame and see if you can dodge the sparks that fly from the flint in her throat when she hits the words "arrogance and pride". I'm posting the full lyrics below the video.

 

Yesterday, when I was young,
The taste of life was sweet, as rain upon my tongue,
I teased at life, as if it were a foolish game,
The way the evening breeze may tease a candle flame

The thousand dreams I dreamed, the splendid things I planned,
I always built, alas, on weak and shifting sand,
I lived by night, and shunned the naked light of day,
And only now, I see, how the years ran away

Yesterday, when I was young,
So many happy songs were waiting to be sung,
So many wild pleasures lay in store for me,
And so much pain, my dazzled eyes refused to see

I ran so fast that time, and youth at last ran out,
I never stopped to think, what life, was all about,
And every conversation, I can now recall,
Concerned itself with me, and nothing else at all

Yesterday, the moon was blue,
And every crazy day, brought something new to do,
I used my magic age, as if it were a wand,
And never saw the worst, and the emptiness beyond

The game of love I played, with arrogance and pride,

And every flame I lit, too quickly, quickly died,
The friends I made, all seemed somehow to drift away,
And only I am left, on stage to end the play

There are so many songs in me, that won't be sung,
I feel the bitter taste, of tears upon my tongue,
The time has come for me to pay,
For yesterday, when I was young
Copyright © 1969, Hampshire House Publishing. Original French Lyric and Music by Charles Aznavour. English Lyric by Herbert Kretzmer (somewhat adapted here by Lena Horne)

Photos: The photo of the young Lena Horne is a classic by John Rawlings, which appeared in the April 1, 1994 of Vogue magazine, and the painting is by Merryl Jaye, who has a wonderful collection of jazz portraits at her website.

Music is a healing force

Don Pullen sequence by Michael Wilderman - displayed in A Tribute to Jazz Piano exhibit at The Jazz Gallery, NYC

One of the most beautiful experiences I have had since transplanting myself here to Spain some 24 years ago now was my friendship with jazz great Don Pullen, whose life was cut cruelly short by disease at the age of 54 back in 1995. Below, I recount an anecdote that I am fond of from those happy earlier days ...

Don Pullen was convinced that in a previous life he had been a gypsy flamenco singer from Sevilla, a cantaor. He confided this to me in one of our first flamenco outings in Madrid to explain why he felt compelled to take in as much of the music as he could despite the demands of his quartet’s nightly playing at the Café Central.

The revelation of the earlier life had come to him one night years before while giving a concert at the Roman amphitheater in the Italica ruins just outside Sevilla. And one of its abiding effects was that in all his visits to Madrid, which were usually one or two week stays, we would go out every night in search of flamenco music. He was always up for more, no matter how hard he had played at the club or how fatigued he might be. And I, of course, was delighted to make the rounds with him.

Three of Don's later albums have flamencoesque tunes on them. A few years later, he told me that at one point he had to stop listening to flamenco because it was becoming too strong an influence and was interfering with his composing.

One night, while we were chatting at the bar between sets at Casa Patas, a downtown Madrid flamenco venue, I noticed we were being observed from across the room by a tall, spindly, long-haired, grey-bearded gypsy. I did not know him personally but recognized the man as a quixotic fixture at the club, always seen hanging with the musicians and dancers that frequented the establishment. When his gaze met mine, he got up from his table, skirted around a few other diners, and strode up to us very resolutely, as if summoning up a great purpose that belied the generally bemused and faraway demeanor I usually observed in him.

Usted es un cantaor de Sevilla, ¿no? —“You’re a cantaor from Sevilla, aren’t you?”—, he asked, almost poking Don’s chest with the index finger of his left hand. I was going to answer directly, but instead translated the question for Don.

Before he could reply the man continued, Porque he oido que en Sevilla hay un cantaor negro que canta, pero ¡para rabiar! —“Because I've heard there is a black cantaor in Sevilla who sings so good that he sends people into a rage”.

This, too, I translated for Don, who, with a slight cock of his head and half smile, as if sorry that he had to dismiss the notion, explained to our visitor almost apologetically, “No, tell him I'm just a black jazz musician from New York”.

When I translated Don's answer, the gypsy’s head popped back slightly in disbelief, puzzled and disappointed. He fell silent and then his gaze slowly drooped downward, taking a few seconds to mull over something that just didn't make sense.

Without taking his eyes of the man, Don instructed me “But tell him that in a previous life I WAS a flamenco singer in Sevilla”. On hearing Don’s matter-of-fact explanation, the man’s fretted brows unforrowed as he lifted his eyes back to Don’s. A quizzical smile gently chased away the puzzlement. ¡Claro! —“Of course”— he exclaimed, the riddle now vanquished. ¡Pues entonces yo te conocí en esa vida! —“So then I knew you in that life! — he announced, and with a triumphant wave of his arm and a generous smile he bid us goodbye, pivoted sharply on the happy discovery and strode away.

One website with a lot of material on Don (discography, photos, music, links to YouTube videos ... ) is http://www.donpullen.de/ There you can find the cover of his 1975 album Healing Force (music is a healing force, Don liked to say), graced by his daughter Tracey (the Newcomer as he called her in another memorable tune).

Juxtaposition of George Apperley's 1931 painting Canción Malagueña and photo (©Outumuro) of the dancer (bailaora) Eva Yerbabuena