Passing Notes

4/24/11

Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie

It’s a strange but true saying that nice guys finish last, and this saying applies, in some ways to the great jazz trumpeter, composer, and bandleader John Birks “Dizzy” Gillespie. Although Dizzy in no way finishes last in any jazz conversation – you never get too far down the list of jazz giants before Gillespie’s name appears – he importance is often overshadowed by contemporaries such as Charlie Parker and Miles Davis.

In a new biography by Donald L. Maggin, whose last book examined the life of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz, the legendary Gillespie receives his due share of historical reassessment. Dizzy’s crucial importance in the history of jazz’s development may be overlooked in part because he made very difficult things look very easy, and, in part, it may be because his life story lacks the sordid or mysterious glamour of Parker and Davis.

But biographer Maggin makes it very clear just how prodigal and ambitious Gillespie was from the very beginning. Determined, with his family, to escape the sharecropping life in South Carolina, Dizzy quickly found that music was his magic carpet to ride to personal fulfillment and material success. Barely more than 20 years old in 1938, Gillespie would find himself in New York City on the verge of developing – along with Kenny Clarke, Charlie Parker, and Thelonious Monk – an entirely new approach to playing music. Gillespie and his colleagues called it modern jazz – although it came to be known as bebop – and it offered a wide-open and virtuosic style of writing and improvisation that made the prevailing swing music of the time seem slow and boring. Historically, most people credit Charlie Parker with “discovering” bebop, but Dizzy more than anyone else was able to synthesize all the contributions of its founders into a coherent new way of playing. And Gillespie was bebop’s public face and leading emissary in the new music’s struggle for mainstream acceptance in the years to come.

An often overlooked contribution of Gillespie’s, too, are his approach to leading a band. Dizzy insisted upon an extremely high standard of technical mastery from all those he played with – in fact, developing the idea of a “virtuoso ensemble” where everyone – all the horn players and the rhythm section – could play anything at any time and in any way imaginable. In his big bands and small combos, too, he set up the idea – later copied by Art Blakey and Miles Davis – making his groups both a laboratory for developing new ideas from young talent and as a musical finishing school for those players.

Gillespie, too, was central in bringing Latin elements into the vocabulary of jazz – first in his development of Afro-Cuban jazz with 1940s musicians Mario Bauza and Chano Pozo, into the 80s and 80s with Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D’Rivera. Just as Gillespie was interested in expanding the harmonic vocabulary of music through bebop, he expanded the music’s rhythmic vocabulary as well with the infusion of Chono Pozo’s polyrhythms in his early Afro-Cuban music, which paid tribute to the Yoruba ancestors that both Gillespie and Pozo had in common.

Some would argue that Gillespie lost his way a bit in his later decades when he became caught up in his role as sometime musical ambassador to the world, in participating in the civil rights movement, even in his half-serious campaign for president. But Gillespie, who never succumbed as did his contemporaries to his darker demons, was a man of generous spirit and social conscience. He remained, to the end, an expansive musical thinker, a bighearted teacher of his knowledge of music, and a champion of the universal appeal of the music he loved.

4/21/11

PN Video Jukebox - Oscar Peterson

A real treasure trove of clips from the great pianist Oscar Peterson, including a complete set of segments from Peterson's appearance on the BBC's 'Words and Music.'

4/19/11

My Sax Life: A Memoir by Paquito D'Rivera

Born in Havana, Cuba in 1948, Paquito D’Divera was raised from a very early age – under the close supervision of his virtuoso father – to be a musician of the first order. A child prodigy on the clarinet and saxophone, D’Rivera became famous in Cuba and in Puerto Rico performing in classical concert halls and on television in all sorts of musical styles. While working in the inconsistently tolerant artistic environment of Castro’s Cuba, as a young man, he became one of the founding members and eventually the conductor of the Orquesta Cubana de Musica Moderna. D’Rivera was also a founding member and co-director of the innovative musical group Irakere, whose explosive mixture of jazz, rock, classical and traditional Cuban music had never been heard before. The group toured extensively throughout America and Europe, won several Grammy nominations and a Grammy. Then, in the early 80s, stepping off a plane in a Madrid airport, D’Rivera left his musical life – as well as his wife and son – behind in Cuba, defecting in hopes of a better life. In very little time, at least professionally, D’Rivera had settled in New York and was performing, recording, and writing music – in both the classical and jazz worlds -- as never before. These days, of course, D’Rivera has reunited with his family and rebuilt his life as have so many Cuban exiles – two million, is it? – around the world.

With talents that reach beyond the world of music, D’Rivera published a novel, Oh, La Habana, and now the English translation of his memoir Mi vida saxual, known to us gringos as My Sax Life. Weigh in in at a generous 349 pages, My Sax Life is a bawdy, intelligent, artistic, and unconventional work of autobiography. Without being egotistical or self-indulgent, and with good-humor and a great deal of heart, this book offers more than a poquito of Paquito on every page. Although I’ve never met the man, it seems safe to say that the personality of the author comes across in each anecdote from his native Cuba, each detailed memory of performing, each gleefully recounted practical joke or naughty story, each off-the-cuff rant against Castro and communism. There is rarely a dull moment.

D’Rivera is at his best when he writes about music, musicians, and other artists, when he describes the distinctive qualities of the Cuban national character – if there is such a thing. He is most shockingly entertaining when he permits himself to be profane and even crude. Unfortunately, he is most tedious when, as often and understandably happens, he falls into the one-note political riff so many Cuban exiles are – understandably – prone to. But, as anyone in Miami will know, you can’t dislike someone like Paquito for long for his politics – he’s just got too much talent and charisma. And My Sax Life is no different. Like any good jazz performance and jazz performer, you won’t know quite where you’re going when you get started with D’Rivera, and you might not like a few things along the way, but when the show’s over you heard some things you’d never heard before and you were glad you came.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

4/16/11

At the Prom

I don’t know how old you are or if your high school had a prom, or if you went to your high school prom. I graduated from high school in the late 80s, from a public high school in small-town New England. And, although we did have a prom – that grand formal dance with a live band, tuxes and gowns and corsages and painful shoes – I didn’t go to mine. I can’t even recall why, really – it had something to do with my high ideals of the time. Maybe I had read Catcher in the Rye too seriously. But, as a member of my school’s student council over the years, I had certainly planned and set-up any number of school dances, formal and informal, so I knew what I was missing.

The formal dances at my high school were always held in the gymnasium – which was, like it or not, the largest available event space within an hour’s drive. Starting on Thursday evening before the big event, an intricate arrangement of high-wires, crepe paper, and balloons would transform the rather boxy hardwood and cinderblock environment of the gym into a pastel-colored, elegantly shaped dreamworld. We would have themes to the prom, usually based on some song had heard all those years on our favorite classic rock station: “Octopus’s Garden,” “Dream On,” and, of course, inevitably, “Stairway to Heaven.” We drove our own cars to the prom; we consumed food that we had brought and the punch we mixed; we arrived early and left late. In short, we made the most of the time there, because there was really nothing better to do.

A few weeks ago I was a chaperone at my first modern big-city prom. Although I am rarely surprised by they way young people do things these days – well, I was rather surprised by the way young people do things these days, the way they do the prom. First of all, no high school gym for today’s kids – no, prom was held at a very fine hotel ballroom right on Miami Beach. For those who didn’t arrive in limousines, there was valet parking. A catered three-course meal was served by waiters in tuxedos. It was a very posh set up – except that instead of a live band, a DJ played music. And boy did he ever, this DJ – played it at almost full volume all the way through dinner, loud enough so that not even the kids bothered much with talking to each other. But once the plates were cleared away, everyone moved to the dance floor, and it seemed pretty much like the formal dances I remember – except we didn’t listen to hip-hop, but I have no problem with hip-hop in general. I just don’t like any music played so loud if makes the lettuce in my salad lose its molecular structure.

At times, I felt as if I were at a wedding reception that lacked a bride and groom, but, as the evening passed, there was much that seemed familiar – although many years ago I was experiencing the prom rather than observing: How everybody looked a little awkward in their fancy clothes; the romantically hopeful singles at the start of the evening, and the heartbroken dreamers at the end of the night; those few kids who arrive late and leave early; the rumors of preparties and afterparties; the arguments between couples and friends, the gossip, the giddiness, the laughter, the futile attempts to hide bad behavior from the chaperones. For the young people, caught up in the moment, it’s as if their entire lives are wrapped up in the evening – and, in a very real sense – their lives are just that. They are, after all, still in high school. Who am I to belittle that experience?

I suppose, in the end, that was one of the reasons I didn’t go to my own prom – I felt I had outgrown it. And maybe I had – but now, I kind of wish I could go back and talk to that eighteen year old me and tell him that, just one last time, put on the tie and jacket and the shiny shoes, pin that corsage on the front of your date’s dress, compliment her on her hair, and go have the most magical night of your life.

4/14/11

PN Video Jukebox - Sun Ra

A selection of interview with and performances by the unique Sun Ra.

4/13/11

Jazz Movies

As part of my ongoing education in jazz – embarked upon several months ago when I started writing this radio feature – I’ve been working my way through the long list of movies about jazz and jazz musicians. After many hours on the couch with a bowl of popcorn balanced on my chest, I’ve come to a few conclusions about what I like in a movie about America’s original musical form. For the purposes of time, I’ll rule out documentaries and concert films – maybe we can address those some other day.

Although it’s worth noting that the first sound motion picture ever made was in fact The Jazz Singer, aside from the musical shorts Paramount Pictures made in the 1930s, there isn’t much of a respectable treatment of jazz until the 1947 film New Orleans appeared. Despite a forgettable story and simply awful acting by the main players, New Orleans is worth your trouble for the sake of watching Louis Armstrong, Kid Ory, Billie Holiday, and Woody Herman perform a number of times. As with many of the early jazz movies, the theme of this film is the journey of the jazz form from a scandalous reputation to a respectable one.

A surprisingly smart and slick film from 1955, The Benny Goodman Story, picks up on this theme. With Steve Allen in the role of the gifted clarinetist and bandleader, the movie tells the story of Goodman’s rise to fame to the point of the now famous concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938, when jazz was said to have been considered, finally, legitimate music. Subtly if effectively dealing with the issues of race, class, and ethnicity, The Benny Goodman Story also features appearances by Kid Ory, Lionel Hampton, Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Harry James. And although Goodman himself never appears on the screen, his superb playing is featured throughout.

I went for a couple of decades before I found another film of note, that being Martin Scorcese’s 1997 movie New York, New York. Now it is a strange film, because Scorcese went out of his way to recreate the colorful, artificial sets and costumes of the musicals of the late 40s and 50s, but within that setting he has his actors – Robert DeNiro and Liza Minelli as pair of poorly-matched musicians – working in a highly realistic, improvisational style. The music is excellent throughout, and even though Liza Minelli might not be your cup of tea, New York, New York will reward a patient watcher in it’s ambition and cheer creativity.

Bebop received a fair treatment in two films of the 1980s. The first, 1986’s Round Midnight, is a dry, moody story based on the lives of Charlie Parker and Bud Powell, and features a remarkable performance by the great Dexter Gordon. Strictly European in its style and pace, Round Midnight offers excellent playing throughout, with a soundtrack by Herbie Hancock, who appears in the film along with musicians John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter, Billy Higgins and Tony Williams, Ron Carter, and Freddie Hubbard. Also worth noting from this decade is Clint Eastwood’s treatment of the life of Charlie Parker, Bird, released in 1988. A technically accomplished if emotionally distant film, Bird showcases an edgy, complex performance by Forest Whitaker as the jazz legend, and Eastwood gives us an early taste of the dark toned movies we’ve come to know in Mystic River and Million Dollar Baby.

This brings me, at last, to the latest and best of all the movies about music and musicians I have seen – 2004’s treatment of the life of Ray Charles, Taylor Hackford’s wonderful film Ray, which, as everyone knows, features a tremendous performance by Jamie Foxx in the title role. In its balancing of humor and pain, of entertainment and drama, and in its simple respect for the actual music of Ray Charles, you will hardly find a better movie – a real and proper movie – about a person whose story moved through that realm of music we call jazz.

4/12/11

One O'Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils

When most people think of places associated with the development of jazz, the short list of cities is easy: New Orleans, Chicago, Kansas City, New York, maybe Havana and Los Angeles. After that, even many experts would have a hard time figuring out where to go on the map.

Professor Douglas Henry Daniels teaches black studies and history at the University of California at Santa Barbara. He has written books about tenor saxophonist Lester Young and a history of African Americans in San Francisco. Now, in looking over the geography of jazz, Professor Daniels has found a band and a city that, for a decade, was a home – or at least a waiting room – for much of the jazz talent to come out of the Midwest in the 20s and 30s.

Daniels’s new book – One O’Clock Jump: The Unforgettable History of the Oklahoma City Blue Devils – tells the complicated story of a legendary band that for a time was a home for musicians Oran “Hot Lips” Page, Lester Young, Eddie Durham, Buster Smith, Jimmy Rushing, and, most famous of them all, Count Basie.

The Blue Devils played, with various formations of exceptional musicians, from 1923 to 1933, providing dance music for black and white audiences both inside and outside the borders of Oklahoma. The Blue Devils were a “commonwealth band,” meaning that much of the time the musical collective was more important than any one player or leader. They shared their pay equally and made decisions as a group.

For musicians in the Blue Devils, the lure of Kansas City’s big group, Bennie Moten’s orchestra, was too much. Over the years, Moten raided the Blue Devils for talent – most significantly when he lured Bill Basie away in 1929. Basie, still to become the Count, would take over the Kansas City when Moten died in 1935 from a botched tonsillectomy.

Professor Daniels’s book presents a number of arguments, all well –supported through interviews and exhaustive print research. He wants readers to understand that in Oklahoma City there was (and is) a well-established and prosperous black middle-class. He wants readers to know that great musicians are more often products of cultural education and hard work than some mysterious force known as native genius. He wants us to know that black entertainers can work together and are not all out to be solitary superstars. He wants us to know that jazz was born as much in places like Oklahoma and Texas as it was in New Orleans and Chicago. Daniels writes against the currents of history’s assumptions, and his arguments are solid and rooted. One O’Clock Jump succeeds as a work of history.

Where Daniel’s book falls short is as a story. The author has chosen a somewhat haphazard plan of organization for his chapters. Some are focused on community, some on character, and few on chronology. What this history of the Blue Devils needed was a more clear narrative line – quite clearly the development of and changes in the band from 1923 to 1933. Instead, too often Daniels takes too topical an approach, and we jump from 1922 to 1937 to 1926 to 1942 in the space of a single paragraph. Then we do it again in the next paragraph.

All in all, One O’Clock Jump is a useful book: meticulous, historically sound, and proper in its emphasis. It suffers only because, in a book about a group of musicians for whom the band always came first, the story of that band is overlooked.

4/10/11

Listener's Notes - 'Medium Rare,' covers from Foo Fighters

Although I haven't heard the album yet, anything from the Foo Fighters gets my attention, and this time around it's an album of cover songs, Medium Rare, released on April 16, just four days after Wasting Light. Medium Rare is a vinyl-only, limited release for Record Store Day, so call around and see where you might be able to get a copy. Among covers you'll hear are 'Band on the Run' from Paul McCartney and Wings, 'Darling Nikki' from Prince, and 'Life of Illusion' by Joe Walsh. That's 800 watts of fresh pots (with apologies to 2/3 of Them Crooked Vultures). Get yer butt out to your local independent record store.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

Playlist - Jazz Cafe 4/10

Duende Del Mate, Pedro Giraudo Jazz Orchestra, Cordoba

Reflections, Eric Reed, The Dancing Monk

LP, Pablo Held, Glow

Paradise Lost, Jeremy Pelt, The Talented Mr. Pelt

Ozz-Thetic, Marc Copland, Crosstalk

This Is Not A Tango, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, Montreal Parade

Loose Wig, Randy Weston, The Storyteller

Angry Chair, The Trio of Oz, The Trio of Oz

Terra Firma Irma, Brian Lynch, Unsung Heroes Project

Somewhere, Lee Morgan, Standards

Happy Blues for John Glenn, Lightnin' Hopkins, The Best of

Eisenhower Blues, J.B. Lenoir, Martin Scorsese Presents

Kindhearted Woman Blues, R. L. Burnside, Acoustic Stories

Pinetop's Boogie Woogie, Pinetop Perkins, Portrait of a Delta Bluesman

I'd Rather Go Blind, Etta James, Martin Scorsese Presents

You Can't Lose What You Ain't Never Had, Muddy Waters, Martin Scorsese Presents

Sweet Georgia Brown, Django Reinhardt, Jazz Masters

Tempus Fugit, Bud Powell, Ultimate Bud Powell

Heebie Jeebies, Louis Armstrong, The Hot Fives, Vol 1

April in Paris, Wynton Marsalis, Standard Time Vol 1

Take the "A" Train, Oscar Peterson, Oscar Peterson Plays Duke Ellington

Frim Fram Sauce, Diana Krall, All for You

4/9/11

Guest Host - Jazz Cafe

Once again, I'll be guest hosting the Jazz Cafe this Sunday morning from 7-9 am on 88.9 FM WDNA in South Florida and online at wdna.org. Since the start of the new year, I've received some 30 new CDs of music, so I'll be sticking closer to my buddy Ed Blanco's usual format new music in the second hour. So, it'll be jazz, blues, and creative backbeats to start things off, and new music from Arturo O'Farrill and the Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra, Brian Lynch, The Rempis Percussion Quartet, Marc Copland, Pablo Held, and the Pedro Giraudo Orchestra, among others. If you haven't had a chance to tune in to listen to WDNA, bend an ear our way and see what's being threatened by Congressional budget-cutting. Peace!

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

Zappa: A Biography

The late Frank Zappa has always been a frustrating figure in the history of 20th century music. Was he a failure as a rock musician because he never had a truly widespread popularity? Was he a genius who somehow couldn’t resist rubbing the nose of the public in his own apparent obsessions with vulgar language and shocking sexual behavior? Was he a pop traditionalist with deep roots in doo-wop and rhythm and blues, or a compositional revolutionary along the lines of Stravinsky and Schoenberg? In the end, Zappa was, it seems, all these things, and more.

The prolific pop culture biographer Barry Miles – who’s written also about the lives of Paul McCartney, Allan Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac – has now turned his attention and his research staff to Zappa. Miles’s new book about of Frank Zappa is more useful than Zappa’s own 1988 autobiography in sorting out the facts of his life from the myths, but it falls short in many ways when it attempts to analyze the significance and meaning of Zappa’s creative work.

Zappa’s parents were from a fairly traditional Italian-American background – which is to say, rather rigidly Roman Catholic – and Zappa grew up in a family that was strict and conservative, even perhaps by the standards of the 1950s. Add to this the Zappa family’s tendency to relocate every two or three years – Frank’s father worked for the defense industry – and young Zappa found himself gravitating toward rock and R&B music as a means of escape and comfort from his family as well as a way to fit in among his constantly changing peer group. By the time Zappa was a teenager and the family had settled (so to speak) in one of the desert suburbs of Southern California, Zappa was playing guitar in various bands.

At the same time, Zappa began developing an interest in – what can we call them – serious 20th century composers like Edgar Varese and, in particular, Igor Stravinsky, and Zappa’s music teachers encouraged him to learn to write musical scores. Zappa admits scribbling out music on staff sheets just in the sheer curiosity to hear what it all sounded like when a band or orchestra played it. Zappa finished high school, but didn’t get much more than a few classes in music theory at community college before he left to pursue his interests in music full time.

By time he began his career as an independent musician, he had already established several characteristics of his process of creation: first, Zappa always worked extremely long and intense hours; second, he had a knack for exploiting (for better and for worse) the talents and resources of those around him; third, he demanded complete creative control of every aspect of his work; and lastly, he rarely turned up an opportunity to shock or offend the establishment. Perhaps because of these traits, perhaps in spite of them, Zappa managed to turn out a consistently bold and innovative rock music, as well as, in the end, a considerable amount of fascinating “serious” music written for the orchestra and the Synclavier.

Miles does an admirable job of chronicling the private and public life of Zappa in his childhood, early years, and his peak creative years, which are in this reviewer’s opinion, from 1968’s We’re Only In It For The Money to 1975’s One Size Fits All. People from the earlier years are perhaps more willing to go on the record about Zappa’s cold treatment of band mates or his often-denied marital infidelities or his disposition to be a prima-donna or an egomaniac. In the later years of Zappa’s life, as he withdrew from touring, focused on his studio work, and eventually succumbed to cancer in 1993, he was surrounded by a close circle of family and friends who remain loyal and tight-lipped. You can’t fault Miles for that.

Those readers looking for another biography of Zappa might take a look at Neil Slaven’s Electric Don Quixote. People who want an analysis of the composer’s music and lyrics, should read Ben Watson’s excellent title The Negative Dialectics of Poodle Play.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

4/6/11

Northern Sun, Southern Moon: Europe's Reinvention of Jazz

Jazz performer, composer, and writer Mike Heffley is also a freshly-minted professor of Ethnomusicology, and his book, Northern Sun, Southern Moon: Europe’s Reinvention of Jazz, argues that some of the most interesting music being made under the heading of J-A-Z-Z hasn’t been in its birthplace in the United States.

Heffley’s argument runs something like this: With the arrival of free jazz, under the influence of innovative American players such as Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane, Sun Ra, and Cecil Taylor, and with the maturation of a second generation of European jazz players – those coming after Django Reinhart and Stephane Grappelli – European players seized upon free jazz and made it something their own. Back in the United States, the author writes, free jazz players like Coleman and Taylor, Archie Shepp, Anthony Braxton, Albert Ayler, Pharoh Sanders, and Lester Bowie were eclipsed by the more commercial fusion music of the 1970s, and then, in the 1980s, by the neo-conservative “classical” repertory jazz of the Young Lions, led, if you will, by Wynton Marsalis.

Both both fusion music and repertory jazz are less about art and more about making money, suggests the author, and free jazz, both in America and Europe, is where the music has continued to evolve. Filthy lucre is the problem, and, apparently, in Europe, says the author, where the arts receive more support, musicians can concern themselves less with what sells to in the market and more with what appears to their imaginations.

In addition to discussing the importance of American free jazz and avant-garde players, Mike Heffley presents those US musicians in their proper stature and influence in the various musical cultures of the nations of Europe. Nation by nation, the author traces the development of each country’s particular style of music, its prominent musicians, and its relation to the larger phenomenon of free jazz on the Continent. Often overlooked European players such as Albert Mangelsdorff, Evan Parker, Peter Brotzmann, Alexander von Schlippenbach, and Peter Kowald are all featured prominently as key figures in the distinctive development of Europe’s music.

Keep in mind that author Heffley is an ethnomusicologist, and that his book, I would guess, is probably some version of his doctoral dissertation. As much, it may be a little too technical or esoteric for some tastes. Frankly, I didn’t understand some of the theoretical passages. But Heffley does a very fine job in his narrative sections, and his research is impeccable. As a work that explores new territory and brings to light scores of musicians and the musical heritage of a dozen nations, this book is invaluable. Anyone interested in free jazz or the avant garde will want to take a look.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

4/5/11

Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen

Although relatively young as national cultural institutions are concerned, Jazz at Lincoln Center in New York, under the direction of Wynton Marsalis, has become the major force in the promotion and education of the art of jazz. Whether it’s the Center’s the weekly radio program hosted by Ed Bradley, or its PBS specials, or the regular recordings by its groups, or the innovative compositions it underwrites, or the many concerts and events it hosts up there in its home at Columbus Circle in Manhattan, JALC commands a vast array of cultural and financial resources for a non-profit arts organization.

It is not surprising, then, that the Center has produced a new book about the music, entitled Understanding Jazz: Ways to Listen. Written by the acclaimed music critic Tom Piazza, Understanding Jazz is a fine introduction for non-musicians as to how to understand some of what jazz musicians are doing in the midst of a live performance. Beginning with the sometimes paradoxical relationship of the individual soloist to the group – which Piazza explains as the relationship between foreground and background – the reader is taken through the basics, so to speak, of how to listen. Piazza clearly explains, for the lay listener, how the blues and other song forms are structured, as well as how musicians improvise in relationship to those forms and tell a story. Piazza is most effective in his discussion of rhythm, of time, and of that elusive element known as swing:

“Picture the arc of a common playground swing,” he writes. “Once you get into a regular rhythm on the swing, the amount of time it takes to get from one end of the arc and then back will be the same each time. But your actual speed as you traverse the arc is not constant; in fact, there is a curve of acceleration and deceleration – a speeding-up on the downward motion and a slowing on the upward part.... In a jazz performance,” Piazza continues, while every bar of music should take the same amount of ‘clock time’ – fill the same period – within those bars and groups of bars there is a constant sense of respiration, of infinitesimal accelerations and decelerations in the actual playing, even though the background pulse, the tempo, remains constant. A large part of the music’s meaning comes from playing with time, this sense of being able to operate flexibly, accurately, and freely within the implied lockstep of chronology—an affirmation, in fact, of the living body against the dead abstraction of time.”

This is all interesting and useful explanation, made all the more interesting and useful because the musical explanations in the book refer often to a companion CD that features seven distinctive jazz tracks. Artists on the CD include King Oliver, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Lester Young, Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, and Stan Getz – among others. Pizza very easily slips into specific musical references to Rollins’s “Mack the Knife” or Davis’s“Footprints” to help you hear what he’s writing about. Understanding Jazz is a book you read with the CD player remote never far from your hand.

At the end of each chapter on each particular music topic, Piazza also includes a rather haphazard discography, a feature which novices might find useful but will likely distract and annoy more expert listeners. Still, all in all, Understanding Jazz is an excellent way for the beginning fan of jazz to make significant steps forward in learning how to listen more carefully to this often complex music and with a more intelligent ear.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

4/4/11

The Last Miles: The Music of Miles Davis 1980-1991

British journalist George Cole, a regular contributor to Jazzwize, has undertaken the project of assessing the often overlooked period from Miles Davis’s comeback in 1980 to his death in 1991, a stage in the jazz legend’s life which has puzzled so many of his biographers. What are we to make of the music of Miles Davis’s final decade, full guitar pyrotechnics and synthesizers, with drum machines and overly slick production tricks? What in the world was Miles Davis thinking?

Many critics are dismissive of this last span of music-making, saying that Miles couldn’t go back to what he had done, but that he also didn’t know how to go forward, and so he went sideways. Others have argued that, a lifetime of creativity already accomplished, Miles chose to “bask in the sun and be the personality that he had become,” and that he simply wanted to be popular, summing up the music of his later years as nothing more than “an advanced form of instrumental pop.” All in all, the verdict on this music was quick and severe.

In his book, The Last Miles, writer Cole approaches the music and the man with vigor, directness, respect, and, most of all, an open mind. Cole gives Miles the benefit of the doubt, and his book is all the better for it.

After almost three decades of making jazz – as well as changing the direction of the music several times – by the middle of the 1970s trumpeter and bandleader Miles Davis retreated from public life and retired to his New York brownstone on West 77th Street. Distracted by drinking, drugs, and women, suffering from health problems and, no doubt, mentally burned out after so many years of being at his peak creatively, Miles Davis lived like a self-described “hermit” from the years 1976 to 1980. After several years of this, a few of his friends – most notably Cicely Tyson, who later became Davis’s third wife – managed to help Miles clean up his act, stabilize his health, and, by the spring of 1980, get him in the spirit of making music again.

Having left off his musical development with the street sounds of 1972’s On the Corner and the fusion that can be heard on the 1975 live albums Agharta and Pangaea, Miles needs an album under his belt before he can get his chops back, but by the time he releases Star People and Decoy, he has returned to some semblance of his former self with musicians like bassists Marcus Miller and Daryl Jones, guitarist John Scofield, and briefly, saxophonist Branford Marsalis. A second set of albums, largely written and produced by Marcus Miller, feature Miles in a mostly digital domain of computer-created sounds – the groundbreaking Tutu, along with Siesta and Amandla. The album Miles was working on when he died, a fusion of hip-hop and jazz, called Doo-Bop, also receives serious attention from writer Cole, who, again and again, balances praise and criticism fairly within the context of taking all this music seriously.

All in all, Cole is meticulous in his research and interviews, and readers will have more than enough information about the writing, production, and performance of all this music – often from the people who worked with Miles first hand. Cole is at his best in telling the story of how each album came together and in explaining the new directions Miles felt he was taking. Cole also provides a particularly fine chapter on the evolution of Miles Davis’s live performances over the last decade of his life.

Summing up matters, Cole suggests that it is still too early to pronounce the verdict on the music Miles final years. Whatever he was doing – either resting on his laurels, seeking a broader audience, or continuing to explore new directions – any dismissal of Miles’s work seems premature. I know, for one, that the first Miles Davis album I ever listened to was 1983’s Star People – and I have become nothing less than a fan of all his music since then.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

4/3/11

Reader's Notes - How Radio Rocks the New Music Ecosystem

From the Future of Music Coalition, we have an article that establishes the value of public community stations in bringing new music to listeners. While it might seem that, in the age of digital downloading, people find their own out-of-the-way music by browsing through billions of songs by millions of artists, but that's not necessarily so. A look at any iTunes top ten list pretty much tells you what you need to know: "Meet the new boss/Same as the old boss." As the article observes, it's really independent forces that drive discovery of fresh new acts and music: "In addition to music blogs and social networks, non-commercial radio are tastemakers that help get the word out early about great music." Full text of the FoM piece is here.

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

4/2/11

PN Video Jukebox - Dave Brubeck

A grand total of 15 clips from the career of pianist and composer Dave Brubeck.

Blackout - The Untold Story of Jackie Robinson's First Spring Training

Jackie Robinson, the African-American baseball player who, in 1947, was the first person of color to play in the modern major leagues, was on the vanguard of desegregation before most people in the country ever heard of him. During Robinson’s time as an Army officer during World War II, he was court-marshaled for refusing to move to the back of a bus, although he was later acquitted of the charges. In 1945, having signed a contract with the Brooklyn Dodgers, Robinson would still have to face, in 1946, a spring training in Florida with his assigned team for that season, the minor league Montreal Royals. During six weeks 1946, Robinson faced the first wave of racist resistance to his taking the field with white players in Florida communities such as Sanford, Deland, Jacksonville, Miami, and – to a lesser extent – Daytona Beach.

The book Blackout, by College of Charleston professor Chris Lamb, finally tells the often overlooked story of Jackie Robinson’s first spring training.

The color line is baseball was bound to have been broken sooner or later. The conservative, dictatorial first commissioner of baseball – Kenesaw Mountain Landis – had died, a vocal African-American and socialist press corps was demanding desegregation of the national pasttime, and black veterans who had fought racism and political oppression overseas were not going to tolerate it on American soil any longer. Add to these factors the tremendous amounts of money to be made by winning teams in the postwar major leagues – well, the talent of black ballplayers could no longer be ignored by the white baseball establishment. The Dodgers’ general manager Branch Rickey supported segregation in large part because he wanted to win: Jackie Robinson would be but one of the black players that would help the Dodgers to a championship in the 1950s.

Chris Lamb, the author of Blackout, does an tremendous job of depicting the outright suffering Jackie Robinson and his wife Rachel endured in that spring of 1946. Transportation and accommodations were so bad that the young Robinsons were unable to make the full trip by train from Los Angeles to Florida. In the Florida panhandle, they were simply kicked off the train. And, when they finally arrived in Daytona Beach, by bus, several days late, frustrated and humiliated, there was no place for them to stay and few places to eat. The Robinsons could rely only upon the generosity of an informal and inconsistent network of black citizens for their daily needs. Daytona Beach, proud home to the activist Mary McLeod Bethune and to Bethune-Cookman College, was in fact the most hospitable place they could find.

Daytona was marginally tolerant of people of color, but most other communities were not. Across the state, not only were the health care, transportation, and school systems segregated, but so too were restaurants and hotels, the bathrooms and drinking fountains, the beaches and swimming pools, as well as actual baseball fields. In many places, Robinson would suit up and take his position, only to have police officers order him off the field. Some grass and dirt, by law, was for whites only. Often, Robinson wasn’t even allowed to sit next to his white teammates on the bench.

Again and again, author Lamb has unearthed horrifying examples of just how commonplace and brutal jim crow was during the 1930s and 40s, and, balancing that, he finds as well many heartening stories of those now-forgotten heroes who helped Jackie Robinson along the way.

Somehow, although he came as close to quitting that spring as perhaps during any time in his baseball career, Robinson made it through. He played when he could, and when the season started, he was the Montreal Royals starting second baseman, leading them to 100 win and the league championship, leading the league it hitting, baserunning, and fielding. The following year, as many of you may know, he started the season with the major league Brooklyn Dodgers, putting a far more public face on the cause of desegregation.

Listen to Blackout review on iTunes - Leave a review!
Listen to Blackout review on Feedburner

PN Feedburner | PN iTunes | PN Twitter | PN Facebook | PN Video | PN Goodreads | PN Tumblr

PN Archives - Idiots and Fools