JazzWax

Interview: Johnny Mandel (Part 1)

Nothing stops Johnny Mandel. As a composer, Johnny has written dozens of pop and jazz standards, including the blockbusters Emily, Suicide is Painless, The Shining Sea, A Time for Love and The Shadow of Your Smile, for which he won an Oscar and a Grammy in 1965. Johnny has scored 36 films, including I Want to Live, The Verdict and Being There. As an album arranger, Johnny won Grammy awards for Quincy Jones' Velas, Natalie Cole's Unforgettable, Shirley Horn's Here's to Life and Tony Bennett's Shadow of Your Smile. He also arranged Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Frank Sinatra's first album for Reprise, tracks on Chet Baker & Strings and Diana Krall's When I Look Into Your Eyes.

What I find most remarkable about Johnny's music is the quiet clash of intensity and sensitivity. After seven decades in the music business, he remains as comfortable arranging a swinging chart for a big band as he is writing sweeping strings behind a singer. The same duality exists in his personality. When you speak with Johnny, you detect a slight urban gruffness in his voice, the tone of a guy who doesn't pull his punches or back down. But after that passes, you soon realize that his true nature is rooted in kindness, warmth and caring. Clearly, these are the qualities that helped make him one of the most in-demand jazz and orchestra leaders and conductors in the business. The edge just gets people to listen hard the first time.

In Part 1 of my five-part interview with the legendary composer and arranger, Johnny talks about growing up first in New York in the early 1930s, then Los Angeles in the mid-1930s, and then moving back to New York in 1937, where he was sent to boarding schools, where he fell in love with the trumpet and began taking arranging lessons from the great Van Alexander:

JazzWax: Where were you born?
Johnny Mandel: In New York. Originally my mother and father lived in Chicago. A year after my sister was born in 1919, they moved to New York. I was born in 1925.

JW: What did your parents do?
JM: My dad was in the garment business. My mom had ambitions to become an opera singer. But back then, in order to make it in the music business, you had to sleep with the producer. She grew up in a Victorian era when nice girls just didn’t do that. So she gave up her ambition of becoming a professional singer. The result was she became very supportive of me when I wanted to become a musician.

JW: Did you have brothers or sisters?
JM: I had a sister, Audre. Her name was pronounced "Audrey," but she left the "y" off. She was creative. Audre was six years older than me. Girls grow up much faster than boys, so I was an only child in a certain sense. My sister and I were friendly, but she was grown up before I ever knew what was happening around me. I was a pest, but she put up with me.

JW: Was your neighborhood in New York tough?
JM: No, we were comfortable. I grew up on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, on 85th St. and West End Ave. I spent a couple of years going to P.S. 9 on 82d St. and West End Ave. One day my mother dropped me off at school on Election Day in 1932, the day Roosevelt was elected president. She didn’t realize there wasn’t school that day. I started wandering around, and they found me conducting traffic on West End Ave. I was seven years old. [Pictured: New York's P.S. 9, now known as The Mickey Mantle School]

JW: What was your mother’s reaction?
JM: She had a fit. She came to pick me up after they called her. The school was prehistoric, as I remember it. We had toilets with a long trough and a bunch of seats. The trough carried everything into the sewers. I got into a fight with some kid about something one day and pushed him in there. His mother called my mother and complained that her kid caught a cold. I remember my mother saying to her, “You’re lucky that’s all he caught.” My mom was a real New Yorker.

JW: How about your dad?
JM: My dad owned a clothing company called Mandel & Cash. But he took a financial beating when the Depression hit in the early 1930s. Then Roosevelt's New Deal forced him to hire a lot of people he didn’t need or use. So in 1934, my dad finally said to hell with it and closed up shop. He had been to California on a visit years earlier and loved it. He wanted to retire there. So we moved. My mother wasn’t happy in Los Angeles at first. She had been sort of a New York swinger and liked it there. She had a bunch of buddies. They were like flappers.

JW: Did you like California?
JM: When I first got out there with my family, I looked around and realized that I hated New York. I hated all the noise. In L.A., we lived in the Hancock Park area. All the houses had been built in the Spanish Mission style in the 1920s. The area looked then pretty much the same as it does today. Back then, there was more grass and trees. I thought it was wonderful. In New York, you went to Central Park once in a while but always in groups. California was a complete change. You could run free.

JW: When did you know you wanted to become a musician?
JM: On the day my dad died at Cedars of Lebanon Hospital in Los Angeles in 1937. I was 11 years old. My dad's sudden death of a heart attack had nothing to do with my decision. A cousin I never knew existed had come to visit, and the day my dad died I spent the day with him. His name was Mel Rosenbach. He was a drummer with Harry Reser's Clicquot Club Eskimos. Back then, the big thing for a band was to have a radio show and name the band after the sponsor. In this case, Clicquot Club was a lemon soda, like 7Up. I met Mel,  and we started talking. He told me he was going out on the road with Reser. I asked why he was doing that. Mel said he was a drummer. I said, “You mean you’re a drummer all the time?” He said, “Yeah, I play with this band, and we play at different dances." I said, “Wow, is it fun?” [laughs]

JW: What did Mel tell you?
JM: He said, “Oh yeah.” I didn’t ask Mel about the girls because I didn’t know about that yet. Later I discovered that most band and jazz guys became musicians because they could get girls easily. And I was one of them. But that would come later. [laughs] When Mel told me what he did with Reser, I wanted to become a musician, too. It sounded like they had a blast.

JW: Were you already listening to music?
JM: Yes. Thanks to my mom’s interests in singing, there was plenty of music around the house. The latest sheet music was there, and the record business was starting to take off again after being clobbered in the early years of the Depression. So everyone I knew played piano for their own amusement or listened to the radio or knew the latest songs. And it was all jazz of one type or another.

JW: What did your family do after your dad died?
JM: We returned to New York, where my mother wanted to live, and stayed at the Essex House hotel on Central Park South.

JW: That's pretty fancy stuff for 1937. How could your mother afford that?
JM: We were lucky that my father had had an insurance policy. After we moved, I met Marshall Robbins, whose family also lived on the fifth floor of the hotel. Marshall and I were the same age, 12. His father was Jack Robbins of Robbins Music, the big music publisher. Jack used to take Marshall and me around to see all the big-name bands in the late 1930s. I knew by then I wanted to play a horn. It had to be a trumpet or saxophone, something you kissed.

JW: Which bands did you see?
JM: Every one of them. I hadn’t learned to differentiate yet. The records were coming out quickly then, and swing was already hot after Benny Goodman had played the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles in 1935.

JW: How long did your family live at the Essex House?
JM: For about a year. Then we moved to the Lombardy apartments hotel on East 56th St. My dad’s insurance policy saved us, and my mother was good with money. We lived comfortably.

JW: Were you a handful?
JM: Boys were very rare in our family. My family knew how to raise girls but they didn’t know much about dealing with boys. They didn’t know how to deal with me after my dad died. I wasn’t a bad kid or anything. While we were still out in L.A., I went to the John Burroughs School [pictured]. But one day I came home with such a bad mouth that my mother sent me to a terrible boarding school called Cal Prep way out in Covina. It was an awful place. But that was a holding pen until we moved to New York. In all fairness, my mother and my sister didn’t really know what to do with a rowdy teenage boy.

JW: What did your mom do with you in New York?
JM: In New York she sent me to a good but dreadful boarding school called the Irving Institute [pictured] up in Tarrytown, N.Y., about 45 minutes north of the city. It was quite an anti-Semitic place. It was for families of rich kids, a middle school for young gentlemen founded by the writer Washington Irving. They didn’t have any use for someone like me. I spent four years at Irving. I had a few friends but stuck with my trumpet. That was all I was interested in. And I totally had my ears glued to the radio. [Click on images to enlarge]

JW: It sounds like they left you alone
JM: For the most part unless I stepped out of line. The Irving Institute was like something out of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. One day I used up all the hot water at 6 am. One of the headmasters got a switch and decided he was going to teach me a lesson.

JW: What did you do?
JM: That was the last straw. I finally told my mother, and she yanked me out of there. I then went to the New York State Military Academy [pictured] in Cornwall-on-Hudson, N.Y. I went on a band scholarship in 1942, the equivalent of high school. The academy was very proud of its marching band, but many of the guys in the band couldn’t play very well. Our gig was to play and march. You learned to march and play at the same time.

JW: Did you enjoy it?
JM: It was a great experience. Having to wake up the whole place as the bugler helped develop my chops—when the horn wasn’t sticking to my lips in the cold. Many well-known musicians went there. The whole Brown family had gone there—Les [pictured], Warren and Stumpy. We had a dance band there that I started arranging for. I graduated in 1944.

JW: Before you graduated, what did you do over the summers?
JM: My mother sent me away to sleep-away camp. In the summer of 1942, I was a music counselor at one. I was a trumpeter in charge of forming a band. The places up in the Catskill Mountains weren’t very nice. I was working there as an employee. The following summer in 1943 I was good enough to play with [jazz violinist] Joe Venuti’s band. That was a baptism by fire.

JW: How so?
JM: We were on the road in the Catskills for about 2½ months over that summer. I was going to stay with the band in the fall but my mother talked me into going back to finish my senior year at the academy. She was right. Joe Venuti was one of the best musicians I’ve ever known. He was such a clown, a practical joker. People didn’t take him seriously but he was every bit as good as Stephane Grappelli. Our girl singer was Kay Starr [pictured]. I learned what it was like to be a professional musician with Venuti. We were on the road a lot, but the band also played in New York at Roseland. That’s how hard up top venues were for musicians.

JW: What did you do after you graduated from the military academy?
JM: One of the first jobs I had after graduating was with Billie Rogers [pictured], the girl trumpet player and her orchestra. She had been with Woody Herman, in his first band, the one known as the "Band that Played the Blues." I was writing for Billie's band and playing third trumpet, but that band broke up three months after I joined.

Tomorrow, in Part 2, Johnny talks about who taught him how to arrange, why he switched from the trumpet to the trombone, meeting a teenage Al Cohn, playing bebop with Alan Greenspan and Leonard Garment, performing professionally in war-time New York and joining Boyd Raeburn's band.

Sunday Wax Bits

Dave McKenna (1930-2008), a swing pianist of extraordinary talents and taste who played in Woody Herman's Capitol Records band in the early 1950s and as a sideman on notable sessions with Bobby Hackett and Ruby Braff, died yesterday. He was 78.

Last night I spoke with Chiaroscuro Records producer and photographer Hank O'Neal [pictured] by email about Dave. Here's a lovely story Hank passed along:

"In the 1970s the two pianists most frequently featured on Chiaroscuro recordings were Earl Hines and Dave McKenna. Earl appeared on a dozen LPs during that decade and Dave appeared on 10. Earl was nearing the end of his career, and Dave's solo career was just beginning to take off. I was lucky enough to be in the presence of these remarkable artists many times. There were no second takes with Earl; he played it once and that was it. He was that secure with what he did. Dave was more thoughtful and the results were equally outstanding. But he was even better when he didn't have any constraints.

One day in late 1977 Dave was at New York's Downtown Sound studio as part of a quintet that also featured Flip Phillips, Kenny Davern, George Duvivier and Bobby Rosengarden. It was a terrific recording, and afterward the guys packed up and left. Everyone but Dave. I suggested we go out for dinner, at the always reliable Blue Mill on Commerce Street. We talked about a lot of things, and as the dishes were being cleared away, I asked Dave if he'd like to come back to the studio and try something.

Always reluctant, he asked what I had in mind. I said, 'Give me a couple of Bradley's [nightclub] sets. No Take 1 or Take 2. We'll just turn on the tape recorder and you play whatever you want to play.' He liked the idea, and we walked back to the deserted studio. I changed the room around for a solo recording and turned down the lights. There was a quick sound check and then Dave just played and played and played. There was never a false note, never a hesitation, and everything was inspired. The only time he stopped was when I had to change the tape. My only regret is that I didn't ask for three sets. It was the last time I worked with Dave on a recording.

Those 10 selections on McKenna (1977) [now out of print] will have their 31st birthday in less than week, and they still sounds just as fresh and inspired as when they jumped out of the speakers in the control room all those years ago. I was lucky to have been there and even luckier to have been able to enjoy this master pianist's music for nearly half a century. And Dave, as I write this, the Red Sox are leading Tampa Bay 2-1."

McKenna also can be heard on Bird with the Herd (1951), featuring Charlie Parker with Woody Herman's band; Solo Piano (1955); Urbie Green's Blues & Other Shades of Green (1955); Phil and Quill (1956); From A to Z (1956), with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims; Chuck Wayne's The Fourmost Guitars (1956); and other albums on Chiaroscuro and Concord. One of my favorites featuring McKenna as a sideman is Bobby Hackett's The Most Beautiful Horn in the World (1961).

NEA Jazz Masters. On Friday evening I traveled down to Jazz at Lincoln Center to see six legends inducted as 2009 National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters. Billed as America's highest honor in jazz, this event was held at the spectacular Rose Theater in New York's Time Warner Center. The concert hall is so magnificent that you constantly have to remind yourself you're not in a classical facility but one built specifically for the music we love.

The annual gala has become somewhat akin to the Oscars, not for the glitz and red carpet nonsense but the sheer number of jazz legends bumping shoulders in one room. Last night I had the privilege of mingling with new inductees George Benson, Jimmy Cobb, Lee Konitz, Toots Thielemans, Snooky Young and Rudy Van Gelder. And I chatted with Phil Woods, Chico Hamilton, Gerald Wilson, Dan Morgenstern, Ira Gitler, Roy Haynes, Billy Taylor, Candido Camero, Frank Foster and so many others. I know, I know. I still can't believe it.

The evening kicked off with NEA chairman Dana Gioia conducting an hour-long conversation with the new inductees about their careers and recollections of other jazz legends. An awards presentation and concert followed, but unfortunately I was pulled away at the last minute and wasn't able to attend.

The reception and on-stage dialogue were sights to behold. Looking around, it was hard to imagine that there, in one room, were major forces behind swing (Snooky Young), bebop (Phil Woods), cool (Chico Hamilton), third stream (Lee Konitz), jazz fusion (Jimmy Cobb), Latin jazz (Candido), West Coast studio orchestration (Gerald Wilson) and jazz contemporary (George Benson). Not to mention, the person who recorded all of them (Rudy Van Gelder). I'm still pinching myself.

William Claxton (1927-2008), whose black-and-white photographs of West Coast musicians in the 1950s provided cool jazz with a laid-back image and brooding mystique, died Oct 11. He was 80. [Photo by Steve Crist]

Born in Pasadena, CA, Claxton was in the right place at the right time. Captivated by the music of his father's big-band record collection, Claxton took a camera into Los Angeles-area jazz clubs just as Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Chico Hamilton, Russ Freeman, Bud Shank, Art Pepper and others were developing a cooler, more linear jazz form. Claxton also was among the first photographers to take journalistic pictures of jazz musicians outside, in daylight hours.

Instead of featuring his subjects in formal suits and ties, Claxton's images introduced America to Southern California's post-War informality. Musicians were photographed in T-shirts, blue jeans, Hawaiian and checked shirts, chinos and scruffy salt-stained loafers. In this regard, Claxton's photographs celebrated not only the fashion of cool jazz musicians but also their surf-and-turf lifestyle shaped by long sunsets, fast cars and disposable culture. Hollywood, too, was swept up by Claxton's romantic images and soon cast actors James Dean [pictured], Montgomery Clift and other brooding types in mid-1950s films about detached, misunderstood youth.

With the emergence of the 10-inch LP and local jazz record labels such as Pacific Jazz and Contemporary in the early and mid-1950s, the demand for album photography soared. Claxton's already-established relationship with many of the West Coast musicians made him the ideal choice for recording-studio photo sessions.

To fully appreciate Claxton's impact and influence, you only need look at jazz photos from the 1930s and 1940s. The bulk were nocturnal, club-based stills dominated by artists with glistening brows and starched white shirts enveloped in plumes of cigarette smoke. By contrast, Claxton's images featured West Coast artists in laid back settings, such as Art Pepper hiking up Fargo St. in Los Angeles or Chet Baker with then-wife Halema [both images pictured].

But Claxton was much more than a photographer of early 1950s jazz or a mere documentarian. There is a perspective and point of view in all of his photographs. Through his early 1950s images we see not only an emerging group of young, talented musicians but also faces that bore the strain of a high-risk lifestyle. The musicians of Claxton's photographs were cool. But in their sunken eyes, hungry faces and tortured smiles you could see frustration and a yearning for an American Dream that always seemed to be just out of reach.

For a superb essay on Claxton, see Doug Ramsey's post at Rifftides here.

Sonny Rollins. Reader John Herr sent along a link here to the site of saxophonist Jimmy Cozier, who has posted a letter Sonny Rollins wrote to Coleman Hawkins in 1962. An interesting correspondence from someone who was considered to be Hawk's equal by 1962.

JazzWax™. I'm happy to report that JazzWax last week was granted trademark status by the U.S. Patent and Trademarks office.

Benny Golson. Next Wednesday at 9:05 am (EST), I will be interviewed on Benny Golson by disc jockey Ralph Benmergui of JAZZ.FM91, Canada's largest jazz radio station. To listen live, go here.

New York jazz scene. NY1 News' art reporter Stephanie Simon just completed a super TV series called 24 Hours of Jazz, a day-long look at jazz in New York City. Her marathon adventure includes interviews with author and critic Will Friedwald. To view Stephanie's series, go here.

Hank Mobley. Today (Sunday) radio jazz maven Sid Gribetz of WKCR-NY is devoting his five-hour Jazz Profiles show to tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley. Tune-in time: 2-7 pm (EDT). Go here to listen live.

Lee Morgan. Tonight (Sunday), trumpeter Lee Morgan will be the focus of historian, writer and musician Bill Kirchner's Jazz From the Archives show on WBGO in New York. Tune-in time: 11 pm to midnight (EDT). Go here to listen live.

Interview: Ted Gioia (Part 2)

Yesterday, my conversation with Ted Gioia, author of the new book, Delta Blues (W.W. Norton), centered on the blues and what makes the seemingly simple musical form so fascinating to so many fans. Much of its appeal has escaped me over the years, given the music's down-and-out themes and repetitiveness. That is, until I read Ted's captivating book, which tracks the blues' development through a series of dramatic artist portraits. [Photo of Ted Gioia by Kent Barker]

Understanding how the blues traveled from the mud roads of Mississippi to the record studios and national popularity is a saga that Ted tells expertly. If there's a date when the blues began that journey, it's likely sometime around 1903, after W.C. Handy took a job in Clarksdale, Mississippi. Handy went there to lead a band, secretly harboring ambitions of topping John Philip Sousa by becoming the next March King. But a late train changed all that. Ted picks up the story in his book:

"Late one evening, at a railway station in Tutwiler, [Miss.], as he half nodded off to sleep while waiting for a train that had been delayed nine hours, W.C. Handy [pictured] encountered a new aspect of the Delta, a different feature of the local landscape, hitherto unknown to him. This chance interaction would change his life decisively, and alter the course of American music. 'A lean, loose-joined Negro had commenced plunking a guitar beside me while I slept,' Handy later recalled. 'His clothes were rags; his feet peeped out of his shoes. His face had on it some of the sadness of the ages. As he played, he pressed a knife on the strings of the guitar in a manner popularized by Hawaiian guitarists who used steel bars.'

Handy did not yet recognize the local Delta tradition of tone-altering and bending with bottle necks, knives and other implements that would come to be known as 'slide' or 'bottleneck' guitar. But he was instantly spellbound by the sounds he heard: 'The effect was unforgettable. His song, too, struck me instantly.' The lyrics were simple and evocative. Three times the singer repeated 'Goin' where the Southern cross' the Dog'—all the time 'accompanying himself on the guitar with the weirdest music I had ever heard.' This three-line form would become a defining aspect of the blues... [Pictured: A Yazoo Delta Railroad or "Yellow Dog" locomotive]

Handy continued to think back to this meeting during the following days and months, and he came to appreciate that the guitarist's music had been more than just an isolated performance but represented nothing less than a regional style....Within a day or two [of hearing a local band in Cleveland, Miss., play music with a similar form], Handy had written arrangements for several of the local plantation songs and began featuring them in performances. He soon learned that the blues were popular with both black and white audiences."

In Part 2 of my two-part interview with Ted (conducted by email), the author and founder of Jazz.com talks about the blues and its influence on jazz. He also shares five must-own blues recordings to help get novices like me started:

JazzWax: When did the blues become such an integral part of jazz expression and performance? Or did jazz grow out of the blues?
Ted Gioia: The relationship between jazz and the blues is clearly a very old one. Jelly Roll Morton [pictured] talks about hearing the blues at a very early age, long before the first jazz recordings were made. I imagine that jazz musicians have always borrowed from the blues. But in time, everyone else did, too.  And they have continued to do so. Today you can hear blues inflections in almost every style of popular music. Rockers and rappers, boy bands, Christian singers, you name it. Everybody has learned from the blues. Jazz players just went there first. 

JW: Was part of the blues’ early commercial success that it was easy to steal and adapt?
TG: Once blues became codified as a 12-bar form with certain set chord changes and licks, it became fairly easy to steal. Certainly this was a cause of its commercial success.  But, in a funny way, it was also a cause of its failure.   

JW: How so?
TG: The aspects of the blues that are the easiest to steal are the least interesting parts. One of the reasons why I didn’t appreciate the power of this music when I was 20 years old was because I saw how simple the formulas are. What I realized only later was that the essence of the great blues players is not contained in the formulas. This is music that breaks the rules. Especially today, when so much commercial music is manipulated and packaged and homogenized, hearing these recordings will give you a much-needed jolt.

JW: Which blues artist had the most influence on Kansas City jazz artists of the 1930s?
TG: Certainly the piano blues was very influential in Kansas City. But separating the blues and jazz elements in the American piano tradition is not an easy task. For example, one of the most prominent of early blues pianists was Little Brother Montgomery, who was born in 1906. But Montgomery heard pianist Jelly Roll Morton as a youngster and was influenced by this New Orleans jazz player. So even at a very early date, jazz was influencing blues as well as blues influencing jazz. Kansas City figures such as Count Basie, Jay McShann, Mary Lou Williams and others no doubt drew on both traditions. Yet in the final analysis, they created a new sound that transcends their influences.

JW: Has the blues evolved over time? Or is it essentially the same?
TG: I recently heard a great recording of Hindustani slide guitar. It borrowed from the blues idiom but created something fresh and different. The blues vocabulary will continue to spur new musical sounds, and this is a striking example of that. But there is also an important tradition of older blues that deserves to be preserved and celebrated. I would like to think that there is room in our cultural life for both the old and the new. 

JW: When did sexual innuendo first become part of the blues expression?
TG: It was probably always there, but commercial pressures likely made it more prominent. Certainly record companies liked the racy parts of race records. As did the audiences for blues music. This was true in the 1920s, it was true in the 1950s and it's true now. I think it is safe to predict, this will still be true 50 years from now. [Pictured: Bessie Smith] 

JW: For listeners like me who have shunned the blues because it seems too static, what recordings would you suggest?
TG: I would recommend listening to blues recordings that transcend the formulas. Of course, you need to listen to Robert Johnson, but you also need to check out the Delta blues musicians who came before Johnson, such as Charlie Patton, Son House and Skip James [pictured, right]. If you don’t have the patience for the poor sound quality of the early recordings, track down the releases some of these artists made when they returned to the studios in the 1960s.   

JW: For example?
TG: Listen to the young John Lee Hooker from the late 1940s and early 1950s. Check out the early Muddy Waters [pictured] and Howlin’ Wolf recordings. Get the first recordings of R.L. Burnside and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

JW: How about five "must have" albums that will provide a fine introduction?
TG: Sure. Here are essentials for anyone who wants to hear the blues in all its authentic and primitive glory [all are available at iTunes or Amazon]:

Robert Johnson—The Complete Recordings

Skip James—Today!

Muddy Waters—The Complete Plantation Recordings

Son House—The Father of the Delta Blues

John Lee Hooker—Jack O’ Diamonds: The 1949 Recordings

Interview: Ted Gioia (Part 1)

I've never been big fan of blues music. I grew up in New York City, so blues has always been a bit simplistic, one-dimensional and repetitive to my ear. I much prefer how jazz artists like Count Basie, Art Tatum, Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Billie Holiday and others have interpreted the back-country idiom. But over the past few weeks, I've become much more open-minded after reading Ted Gioia's breathtaking new book, Delta Blues (W.W. Norton). [Photo of Ted Gioia by Kent Barker]

Ted is founder of Jazz.com, which launched in December 2007 and has rapidly become a prominent web destination for jazz intellects and fans. When Ted isn't writing and editing, he's a jazz composer and pianist who has recorded several CDs. So he can walk the walk. He's also author of several essential books on jazz, including The History of Jazz, West Coast Jazz, The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture, Work Songs and Healing Songs. In the parlance of scribes, Ted can crank it out.

More important than all of this to the average reader is that Ted is a superb storyteller, and Delta Blues is a fabulous read. Here's how the book opens:

"The Delta region of Mississippi is an expansive alluvial plain, shaped like the leaf of a pecan tree hanging lazily over the rest of the state. Stretching some 220 miles from Vicksburg to Memphis, it is bounded on the west by the Mississippi River, and extends eastward for an average of 65 miles, terminating in hill country, with its poorer soil and different ways of life, and the Yazoo River, which eventually joins the Mississippi at Vicksburg. For blues fans, this is the Delta..."

Ted knows how to draw you in and hold you. I wasn't particularly interested in the blues, let alone hill country before I picked up Delta Blues. Yet I found myself returning to Ted's book night after night, learning a lot along the way. Now I'm ready to start listening.

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Ted (conducted by email), I asked the author about the Delta blues, its origins and how it has managed to survive and remain so vital and important today:

JazzWax: Is the blues as simple an expression as the songs make it seem, or is there more to it?
Ted Gioia: These old blues songs seem simple enough to understand based on their lyrics, at least at first. They linger over everyday events, often very banal ones. I can’t even begin to count how many blues songs start out with the phrase, “Woke up this morning.” But the more you dig into this music, the more you see how deep and complex these songs actually are.

JW: How so?
TG: These songs may talk about everyday events, but there is always something larger lingering below the surface. Sometimes it's a bigger personal or social tragedy. Heaven knows there was plenty of that to go around in the Mississippi Delta. But psychological and even spiritual conflicts also figure in this music.

JW: What are the broad themes?
TG: Redemption and damnation, which recur over and over again in blues songs, sometimes in very surprising and peculiar ways. The end result is a body of music that no longer is quite so simple. As you dig deeper into it, the music responds by getting deeper too. This discovery on my part was one of the reasons why I wanted to probe the history and meaning of these songs. 

JW: But this music in its most basic form is pretty simple stuff, no?
TG: The story behind the music is the same as the story behind the words. Yes, the music seems pretty basic. Just three chords, and sometimes you don’t even get three. When I was 20 years old, I would have dismissed a lot of early blues just by looking at the chord symbols on the lead sheet.

JW: What changed your mind?
TG: I now realize how much I misunderstood the music when I was younger. The early blues has very little to do with chord changes. It reflects the influence of even earlier African and African-American traditions, in which musicians conceptualized their songs in terms of sound and sound colors instead of discrete chords and notes. 

JW: What do you mean by "sound colors?"
TG: Let me give an analogy from the jazz world. If you listen to King Oliver’s solo on Dippermouth Blues from 1923 with a jaded modern perspective, you will be tempted to dismiss it as simple stuff. Oliver’s solo is just built on a few notes, really little more than a single phrase that he plays over and over again. When you compare Oliver to his protégé Louis Armstrong, Oliver seems to be out-classed. After all, Armstrong knows lots of notes, lots of phrases. He’s all over the horn in ways Oliver could never match.

JW: What's the lesson here?
TG: Clearly, this is not the right way to listen to King Oliver. Oliver is a master of textures and colors, and he can play the same phrase 20 times over and make it sound different each time. In other words, Oliver’s greatness was in mastering music as an infinite universe of sounds, not as a way of manipulating the notes in a scale. Even today, jazz musicians could learn a lot by studying this aspect of King Oliver’s work. 

JW: What’s a good blues comparison?
TG: In the blues, the evolution from Son House [pictured] to Robert Johnson is the same as the shift from King Oliver to Louis Armstrong. Son House is almost like an African griot. It is impossible to reduce what he does to notes on a page. When he plays a note, it is more than a note.

JW: How did Robert Johnson extend Son House's blues?
TG: With Johnson [pictured], things start to change in the Delta idiom. Johnson, in this regard, is like Louis Armstrong. Johnson brilliantly conceptualized the blues as a system of licks and chords and notes. Because of this, Robert Johnson created a vision of blues music that could be assimilated by Western music, with its preference for things that are neat and codified. But in the background of all this Delta music there is a powerful Africanized current, a vision of songs as torrents of sound. This part of the blues is anything but simple, and has proven much more difficult to assimilate and appropriate. The blues can be a simple formula. You can teach it to a guitarist in a single lesson. But the Delta greats transcended the formula. 

JW: How so?
TG: For example, listen closely to the music of John Lee Hooker [pictured] and you will hear how he struggled to play a 12-bar blues. He might end up leaving out a bar, and getting an 11-bar blues. Or he might add extra beats to get a 12-and-a-half bar blues. Every time Hooker played a song, it sounded different. But his resistance to the traditional blues formula was part of the reason why this music sounds so good. What Hooker achieved you can’t teach in a single lesson. You can’t teach it in a thousand lessons. 

JW: What made Hooker more special than blues artists of the same period?
TG: His music, especially his early recordings, always captured a groove and a flow and an exciting sense of spontaneity. His ability to enter into the pulse of the blues and not try to contain it in neat metrical structures of Western music is breathtaking to hear. I offer Hooker as an example here, but there are many other early blues musicians who did the same thing.

JW: Such as?
TG: There is an interesting recording by Blind Lemon Jefferson called Rising High Water Blues from 1927 that finds him collaborating with a piano player. Jefferson sticks to a strict 12-bar blues form because he doesn’t want to confuse his accompanist. But, in fact, this is one of Jefferson’s least interesting records. He shows that he knows how to handle a formulaic blues when he must, but his music is much more exciting when he plays solo and ignores the bar lines. 

JW: What’s different about the birth of the blues and the birth of jazz?
TG: There are still many mysteries about the birth of both. They both tantalize us. We try to pinpoint how a folk-oriented music became commercial music. The fascinating thing about early blues is that you can hear this process first hand. Musicians would go straight from the raw life of plantations and prisons into the studios to make commercial recordings. This is a remarkable thing to hear. I wish we had such unfiltered insights into the birth of jazz. 

JW: Yet for the blues to have meaning, it must remain true to its coarse folk roots as it surfaces commercially, yes?
TG: One of the aspects of the Delta blues that I find most compelling is the large number of artists over time who never have seemed to settle comfortably into the role of commercial musician. They existed at the periphery of the music industry.  From one perspective, this was a tragedy.  They would have made a lot more money if they had been more commercial. At the same time, this distance from the music industry allowed them to hold onto the traditional pre-commercial roots of their music in a way that was far less common in the jazz world.

Tomorrow, Ted talks about the relationship between jazz and the blues, why the blues became so easy to steal by other musicians, jazz's influence on the blues, how the blues continues to evolve, and five essential blues recordings.

Neal Hefti (1922-2008)

Neal Hefti, one of jazz's most intuitive big-band arrangers and composers of the 1940s and 1950s whose scores so perfectly matched the bands he wrote for that they often became their best-known recordings, died on October 11. He was 85.

For six decades, Hefti's keen ear and fast pen enabled him to move effortlessly between swing, bebop and cool jazz styles as well as meeting the demands of Hollywood's studio system. From his first recorded arrangement in 1942, Hefti's tasteful and swinging composing and writing sensibilities won the respect of both jazz's most skilled soloists and best-known big band leaders. Hefti's now nearly forgotten prowess as a trumpet player and improviser in the 1940s put him in the recording company of Louis Armstrong, Benny Carter and Lucky Thompson.

The magic of a Hefti arrangement often began with a bouncy theme. As the theme advanced, different sections of the band would join in with strong, inventive harmony lines. The arrangement would then continue to rise ambitiously to new levels of intensity. Finally, the tune would plateau with a crescendo passage that sealed the deal for the listener and made you want to hear it again. From a musician's standpoint, even a straightforward Hefti arrangement could be deceptively demanding, requiring strong reading skills and an innate ability to swing. As a result, Hefti's charts often made quick work of dilettantes and poseurs.

While many arrangers during the late 1940s and early 1950s reached for moody post-war European classical motifs, Hefti remained true to the swing tradition. Whether he was arranging for Charlie Barnet, Woody Herman, Harry James [pictured] or Count Basie, Hefti always understood that the reeds did the talking, the trumpets did the shouting and the trombones did the badgering. To keep an arrangement interesting, Hefti always wrote as though the band's different sections were having conversations among themselves across some imaginary fence. And yet, Hefti's charts for one band sounded nothing like his charts for another. The bandleader who commissioned Hefti received compositions and arrangements that suited that orchestra's personality.

Hefti's first known recorded arrangement was Daisy Chain in 1942 for Charlie Spivak [pictured], in whose band Hefti played trumpet. Hefti joined Woody Herman's trumpet section in 1944 and freelanced as a member of several ensembles, including Flip Phillips' Fliptet, a bop ensemble that included Bill Harris on trombone, Ralph Burns on piano, Billy Bauer on guitar, Chubby Jackson on bass and Dave Tough on drums.

Caldonia was Hefti's first hit arrangement for Herman [pictured] in early 1945. By the fall, Hefti had carved out a new explosive bop sound for the band with The Good Earth, Black Orchid, Wild Root and Blowin' Up a Storm. The hard-charging arrangements were so impossibly difficult and performed so flawlessly that they instantly set Herman's band and musicians apart. Much of Hefti's bop feel was learned firsthand while hanging out in kitchens of jazz clubs on New York's 52d Street.

In 1946, Hefti freelanced on trumpet and arranged for Benny Carter, Georgie Auld [pictured], Herbie Fields, Charlie Ventura, Buddy Rich and others. His first recording session as a leader came in December 1946, fronting a group that included Kai Winding, Charlie Ventura, Billy Bauer, Chubby Jackson and singer Frances Wayne, whom Hefti would later marry.

In 1947, Hefti recorded for RCA with Lucky Thompson [pictured] and His Lucky Seven. The now almost-forgotten session included Hefti on trumpet, Benny Carter on alto, Thompson on tenor, Bob Lawson on baritone sax, Dodo Marmarosa on piano, Barney Kessel on guitar, Red Callender on bass and Lee Young on drums.

Hefti's first big career turning point came at age 25. In December 1947, as Hefti rehearsed an orchestra at Carnegie Hall prior to recording two compositions for Norman Granz's [pictured] The Jazz Scene album, Charlie Parker wandered onto the stage. Fresh from his own Granz recording session in the hall, Parker enjoyed the song being played so much he asked Neal if he could solo on top of it. Rather than rewrite the intricate arrangement, Hefti merely had the orchestra play the song twice, with Parker soloing on the second run through. Renamed Repetition, the song not only was an early example of linear writing and an inspiration for cool jazz, its success led Granz to record Parker with strings in 1949, 1950 and again in 1952.

Following this 1947 date, Hefti continued to arrange for Woody Herman as well as Harry James, resulting in James' only bebop efforts and many believe his most exciting work. Throughout his career, Hefti retained a close working relationship with both Herman and James.

Hefti's first arrangement for Count Basie was an octet session in 1950 that resulted in Neal's Deal, Bluebeard Blues and others. The following year Hefti began arranging in earnest for Basie's big band. He wrote and arranged compositions such as Little Pony, Plymouth Rock, Cherry Point, Cute, Coral Reef, Splanky and others that would become the "New Testament" band's musical fingerprint. Hefti's arrangements also added enormous drama to Basie's swing, purposefully holding Basie's role to here-and-there chords and individual notes played in between the orchestra's brass and reed lines. This cooler sound created an electrifying contrast between a minimalist bluesy piano and a roaring band that could take your head off. In effect, it was the musical equivalent of a seasoned driver cockily handling a Mack truck with just two fingers on the wheel. Hefti's work for the Basie band reached a peak with Atomic Basie (1957) and Basie Plays Hefti (1958).

Included on Atomic Basie is Lil' Darlin', one of Hefti's best known ballads.  Not long ago I spoke with saxophonist Hal McKusick [pictured], who recorded with Hefti's bands in the 1950s, about the song and its slow, un-Hefti-like tempo:

"When I asked Neal about it, he said he originally wrote Lil' Darlin' as a medium-uptempo tune. But after Basie ran it down the first time, he asked Neal if the band could try it really slow. Basie said, 'I'm hearing something.' Neal said sure. He knew Basie's instincts were always spot on. Basie said, 'Let me beat it off.' He proceeded to count off Lil' Darlin' at the much slower pace. After it was over, Neal said all he could do was smile and say to Basie, 'You did it.' "

Throughout the 1950s, Hefti arranged for many other orchestras as well as studio bands that he assembled for a range of semi-jazz, easy-listening projects. In 1962, Frank Sinatra recorded Sinatra and Swingin' Brass, an album of standards arranged by Hefti and featuring Ben Webster on tenor saxophone. Around this time Hefti began scoring for the movies and television. Among Hefti's most popular TV themes were for the Batman and The Odd Couple series. His best-known movie scores were for Sex and the Single Girl, Boeing, Boeing and Barefoot in the Park.

Deep down, Hefti was always a jazz musician first, with a strong bop upbringing. As he told Ira Gitler, in Swing to Bop:

"I would say I got into jazz when I got into Woody Herman's band [1944] because that band was sorta jazz-oriented. They had records. It was the first band I ever joined where the musicians carried records on the road...That's the first time I sort of got into jazz. The first time I sort of felt that I was anything remotely connected with jazz.

But anyway, when I was stranded in New York [in 1946] before I joined Charlie Barnet and during the time that I waited out my six-month transfer period in New York, Dizzy was playing on the Street at many of the clubs that were there. Sometimes as a leader, sometimes as a sideman. So I used to go down there quite often. Got to see him. Got to know him. Got to know all the musicians one way I could go hear them play without paying for it, cause I didn't have any money anyway. I didn't drink so I wasn't going to be able to sit at the bar. So I'd sort of hang out back in the kitchen with them. So I got to hear a lot of that. I presume that I started bringing those things [that I heard] into [the songs I wrote for] Woody's band."

JazzWax tracks: Rather than feature a five-foot long list of Hefti's recordings, I thought I'd simply list my favorites:

Daisy Chain (Charlie Spivak, 1942)

The Good Earth (Woody Herman, 1945)

Repetition (Neal Hefti's Orchestra and Charlie Parker, 1947)

Or Words to That Effect (Harry James,1949)

Neal's Deal (Count Basie Octet, 1950)

Coral Reef (Neal Hefti and His Orchestra, 1951)

Skylark (Jackie Paris vocal, 1953)

Plymouth Rock (Count Basie and his Orchestra, 1953)

Portrait of Jenny (Clifford Brown with Strings, 1955)

You Do Something to Me (Hefti Hot N' Hearty, 1956)

Flight of the Foo Birds (Atomic Basie, 1957)

Two for the Blues (Hefti, Pardon My Doo-Wah, 1958)

I'm Beginning to See the Light (Sinatra and Swingin' Brass, featuring Ben Webster, 1962)

How to Murder Your Wife (soundtrack, 1965)

Barefoot in the Park (soundtrack, 1967)

The Odd Couple (movie theme, 1968; TV theme, 1970)

JazzWax clips: How to Murder Your Wife (1965) is my favorite Neal Hefti soundtrack. The movie is dopey, but the theme is pure joy. You can hear the score here in the trailer (once you get beyond the sappy narrated intro). This one deserves a reissue. I have it on vinyl, and Hefti's jazzy 1960s sound is pure bliss all the way through.

Hefti's score for Barefoot in the Park's comes in a fast No. 2 for me. Here's the trailer, which gives you snippets of Hefti's waltz used for the theme. Unfortunately, I couldn't find the film's intro, which is one of the sweetest love letters to Central Park. It features a just-married Jane Fonda and Robert Redford riding in a Hansom cab through the park on a winter afternoon on their way to the Plaza Hotel.

Love Hefti's The Odd Couple theme as I do? Here's the original movie theme with vocals. Based on Sammy Cahn's lyrics, I'm not sure they showed Sammy the film or filled him in on the storyline. And here's the TV theme from season No. 1. Here's season No. 2's intro. I guess the second season required some 'splainin'.

Interview: Art D'Lugoff (Part 2)

Art D'Lugoff owned the Village Gate from 1958 to 1994, when the storied jazz club closed. During the Gate's 36-year run, Art booked a wide range of jazz talent along with folk, comedy, blues, Latin and pop acts. His accomplishments in this role include combining jazz and folk acts on the same bill, combining jazz artists and comedians like Bill Cosby and Woody Allen, and moving Latin-jazz and Salsa beyond their initial dance-hall popularity in the 1960s and 1970s.

Art is from a different era. Back in the late 1950s and 1960s, making a killing as a club owner mattered less than managing space where gifted artists could express themselves. Today, sadly, the financial stakes are different, and return on equity almost always trumps art. Fifty years ago, Art's generation of club owners focused on showcasing poetic artists, brilliant music and creative risk-taking. If they broke even or lost a little each year, so be it.

In Part 2 of my two-part interview with the legendary club owner, Art talks about Miles Davis,  Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, McCoy Tyner, Gerry Mulligan and Bob Dylan.

JazzWax: Miles Davis played the Village Gate in the late 1960s, yes?
Art D'Lugoff: Yes, many times. Miles Davis was a character. He thought he was a pop star in the late 1960s but he wasn't. I loved him dearly but he wasn't doing the kind of business that pop acts were doing. At one point Miles felt that Blood, Sweat & Tears should open for him. This was at the time when the group had huge hits.

JW: Which of the two drew the larger crowd?
AD'L: Blood, Sweat & Tears. We didn't underpay Miles. Blood, Sweat & Tears got $25,000 for a week while Miles got $5,000. That was based on box office. Look, we were the first club to have Dizzy Gillespie and his group and Miles Davis and his group on the same bill. Unfortunately they didn't draw more than 500 to 600 people in the 1960s.

JW: What was Miles like?
AD'L: He didn't talk much. I remember that Jack Whitmore, Miles' agent, was very good about keeping him on a straight line for performing. Miles was a beautiful person and always dressed impeccably. His music was relatively new to me back in the late 1950s. I had seen him at the Cafe Bohemia and was very taken with what I heard, but I had listened primarily to Dixieland and swing then. At the Gate, Miles always wanted to open a show to get home early. He didn't have that thing many stars had about insisting on closing a show. It didn't matter to him. Upstairs I had a restaurant. Miles liked the spinach salad I prepared for him every night when he played the club. It had spinach, chickpeas and Baco-Bits tossed with a creamy vinaigrette. He watched what he ate.

JW: You played a big role in singer Nina Simone's career?
AD'L: Nina was amazing. When she played the Gate, it was electrifying. Every show was an improvisation. As much as you may like Ella or Sarah, Nina was one of a kind. She played at the Gate for many, many years. [Pictured left and below: Posters for Nina Simone concerts produced by Art D'Lugoff; click to enlarge.]

JW: From a club-owner's standpoint, was she easy to deal with?
AD'L: Nina could be difficult. I remember one night she didn't want to go on. I have no idea why not. New York Times jazz critic John Wilson was in the audience. So was author James Baldwin. I sent both of them into Nina's dressing room to get her to go on. Finally she did. It was a bit excruciating and nerve wracking. I think we all drank our share of vodka that night.

JW: Did you ever pair her with someone unusual on the same bill?
AD'L: Yes, Carmen Amaya, the great flamenco dancer. Each one did her own thing, and the same audience loved them both. Langston Hughes told me afterward that gypsy music and jazz shared many similarities.

JW: Did Nina's political shift occur around the time she played the Gate.
AD'L: I think so. I introduced Nina to Lorraine Hansberry [pictured], author of Raisin in the Sun and a dear friend of mine. Lorraine had a big influence on Nina politically. I also introduced Nina to Langston Hughes. You have to understand, back then I was friends with a large eclectic group of artists who were passionate about music, art, literature and civil rights. It was a different time. Nina had enormous courage and she knew she was free to do as she pleased creatively at the Gate.

JW: Did you ever discuss civil rights with Nina?
AD'L: Plenty of times. During the early 1960s, everyone was very aware of what was happening down South to African-Americans. In March 1965, Nina was booked into the Gate but she wanted to go down to Selma, Alabama, and join the protest march to Montgomery. So I called Langston Hughes and some other friends. I closed the Gate, and we all flew down to Selma to march to Montgomery with Nina.

JW: Did Nina have a big impact on other folk artists who appeared at the Gate?
AD'L: I think so. Nina had a big influence on all forms of music, including jazz. Her form of protest music was so open and honest, and I think it inspired many musicians coming through the Gate to try a similar, expressive approach. Her song, Mississippi Goddam, is a great example. She first performed that song at the Gate in 1964.

JW: Did McCoy Tyner play the Gate?
AD'L: Twice. And this is unbelievable: On both nights, New York City had a big blackout—once in November 1965 and again in August 1977. We put candles all over the place. We still laugh about the coincidence.

JW: Was Charles Mingus tough to deal with?
AD'L: Not at all. Despite what many people think, Charlie wasn't a racist against whites or anyone else. He was a fascinating guy and a terrific musician and composer. I remember one night I was catching a nap on the couch in my office. At around 2 am Charlie came in and woke me up. He wanted to apologize.

JW: For what?
AD'L: He said, "Oh, Art, I'm so sorry I threw all those ashtrays at people in the audience." He said he was flinging them at people who were too noisy. He was as polite as can be when he was telling me this. I said, "Charles, don't worry about it. I can understand your feelings." He said, "Thanks so much, Art" and quietly left. I always loved booking him.

JW: Why?
AD'L: The music mattered more to Charles than anything. One summer in 1961 I booked him for a month. I made a price and we agreed to it. Then he wanted to bring all sorts of musicians in, like Rahsaan Roland Kirk, with his incredible musicianship and instruments. He said the musicians would be paid out of his share. I went around to various record companies to tell them who was going to be there. Not one would come in to record the group live. Can you imagine that? What a shame.

JW: How was Thelonious Monk?
AD'L: Monk was fantastic. He played his last club performance at the Gate. The Baroness [Pannonica "Nica" Koenigswarter, Monk's benefactor], told me that. His piano playing was amazing, not to mention all those different hats he wore. Why he did that was very secretive. I'm not sure what the significance of that was.

JW: Who else was eccentric?
AD'L: Gerry Mulligan was pretty intense. I liked him a lot. We often talked politics. I saw him at one of the Newport Jazz Festivals. He told me out of the blue that his relentless playing schedule took away his sexual prowess. What could I say? He was a wonderful guy and very pleasant to be with. Earlier, when Gerry played the Gate, Judy Holliday pursued him aggressively, coming in every night. Of course, they wound up together. [Photo: Gerry Mulligan and Judy Holliday in 1961]

JW: So I hear you turned down Bob Dylan?
AD'L: He had just come to New York City and was playing at Gerdes Folk City on West 4th St. with Joan Baez. He caught me on Bleecker St. one day and asked if he could audition to play at the club. I said, "Now?" He said, "Yes." So I said we should go to the Caricature Cafe on McDougal St. I knew it would be empty in the early afternoon and it was easier going there than turning on all the lights at the Gate. When we got there, Bob took out his guitar and played for me. It was all Woody Guthrie. I said to myself, "I already have Ramblin' Jack Elliott playing the club, who already was doing Guthrie's stuff. What am I going to do with this kid?" Besides, Guthrie was still alive, and Bob was so clearly doing him.

JW: What did you tell Dylan?
AD'L: I listened to Bobby and I was nice and said I'd consider it. At the time, he wasn't big enough to draw a crowd at the Gate. I didn't think doing that close an imitation of Guthrie was going to get him anywhere. A couple of years later he played Town Hall and the event lost money. His big break came in 1961 when Robert Shelton, the New York Times' folk critic, gave him a big write-up. No one was reviewing folk music for newspapers other than copyboys at the time. Even when Bobby made it, I didn't care much for him. It had nothing to do with the music. I just never liked his voice. But the youngsters cottoned up to him. He was very clever to go electric at [the] Newport [Folk Festival] in 1965.

JW: Looking back, what made jazz musicians in the 1950s and 1960s so special?
AD'L: What you have to remember about all of these musicians is they were very creative people. They were eccentric because they were enormously gifted. They didn't live by everyone else's rules. If they did, they wouldn't have become jazz musicians. They would have been something else. They lived and performed by their own rules, which takes courage. It's hard to understand that culture today, where everything has to fit. These musicians were driven by emotion and sensitivity. They didn't always think everything through, which is what made their art exciting. This way of life doesn't really exist anymore.

Interview: Art D'Lugoff (Part 1)

As jazz legends go, Art D'Lugoff is up there. He's among the last of a breed who in the 1950s owned and operated a prominent New York jazz club. Art opened The Village Gate in 1958 on Bleecker and Thompson streets in Greenwich Village. The club initially hosted jazz and folk but soon expanded to include comedy, Latin, blues and pop. The club closed in 1994, but during its 36-year run, the Village Gate featured John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Thelonious Monk, Horace Silver, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Nina Simone, Herbie Mann and many others.

Tonight, Art, 84, is producing the first of three Salsa Meets Jazz performances in Greenwich Village, reviving the famed Latin-jazz series he started at the Gate in the early 1970s. The concert will be held at Le Poisson Rouge, a restaurant-club located in the exact same building as the former Village Gate. The concert will feature the big band of Bobby Sanabria [pictured], with guests Jon Faddis on trumpet and Candido on congas. (Show times tonight: 7 and 9:30 pm; information: 212-505-3474). Two more Salsa Meets Jazz concerts are planned for December 1 and 29.

In Part 1 of my two-part interview with the legendary jazz club owner, Art talks about Billie Holiday, John Coltrane, Odetta, Stan Getz and the greatest night of his career at the club:

JazzWax: Before you opened the Village Gate, you were a jazz concert producer, yes?
Art D’Lugoff: That’s right. One of those was a Billie Holiday concert in June 1957. I co-produced it with the Village Voice newspaper. Dave Brubeck and other musicians were on the same bill. The concert was held at the Loew's Sheridan [pictured] on 7th Ave. and 12th St., a theater that held about 2,500 people and has since been torn down. It was Billie’s first performance in New York since the 1940s because of her cabaret card problems.

JW: She was in Philadelphia that night, wasn't she?
AD’L: Yes. The plan was that when she finished her club date down there at 11 pm, Jerry Tallmer from the Village Voice was going to speed her up to New York by 1 am. She had to arrive before 2 am to perform, since there was a 3 am entertainment ban in New York at the time. The time of night sounds crazy by today's standards, but things were different then. People were much more passionate about music and art and ideas.

JW: Did she make it in time?
AD’L: On the way up, Billie insisted that Jerry keep stopping at restaurant areas on the New Jersey Turnpike for drinks. We expected her a little after Brubeck got off at around midnight. But she wasn’t there. The audience didn’t move and waited. We knew she'd get there eventually. Jerry called us along the way. Finally, she showed up close to 3 am. I think someone paid off the police to let the show go on that late. As I remember the event, Billie gave a fine performance but not a great one.

JW: You opened the Village Gate in 1958. How did the club get its unusual name?
AD’L: The club was on the corner of Bleecker and Thompson streets in Greenwich Village. The club’s entrance was on Thompson St. and it had a gate. I also may have been thinking about the Gate of Horn, a famous folk club at the Rice Hotel in Chicago. Either way, the building had a gate, so it seemed like an appropriate name.

JW: There were two clubs there, yes?
AD’L: Yes. I had the Village Gate and later the Top of the Gate, a smaller space I started as a place for pianists. When Bill Evans would play there, pianist Peter Nero [pictured] used to come in and crib from him. Bill was sort of introverted, and we didn’t talk much. I've heard that tapes of Bill playing the Top of the Gate were recorded surreptitiously and that producer Orrin Keepnews may have them.

JW: Who was the first artist to play the Gate?
AD'L: Earl "Fatha" Hines. He was fantastic. He could make any piano sound great.

JW: You were known for putting two radically different types of artists on the same bill. Why did you do that?
AD’L: It was always a risk but I liked to mix it up. I wanted to see if audiences for one artist would go for a completely different type of artist. To me, great music was great music, no matter what. Sometimes the combination worked, sometimes it didn’t.

JW: Which pairing specifically didn’t work out?
AD’L: There were a few. One was John Coltrane and folk guitarist and singer Odetta. Putting them on the same bill was a big mistake.

JW: What exactly do you mean by “the same bill?”
AD’L: One went on after the other performed, with the audience remaining largely the same. You’d see both for the same cover charge. Each artist, obviously had a different fan base. This was in the mid-1960s, and Coltrane’s fans enjoyed his far-out approach. So they didn’t warm to Odetta’s softer, more introspective folk music. Meanwhile, Odetta’s fans didn’t get Coltrane for much the same reason. The two types of music weren’t in sync.

JW: Did fans walk out?
AD’L: No, no. [laughing] I had heard from several people that the pairing wasn’t happening and that the audience wasn’t happy. It just wasn’t an exciting match for the person who came to hear one or the other. I sensed right away it was wrong. Coltrane and Odetta got along personally. But the audience was clearly uncomfortable. [Pictured: Coltrane at the Village Gate in 1961; photo by Herb Snitzer]

JW: What was Coltrane like during this period of his career?
AD’L: He was taciturn and didn’t talk much. He wasn’t an extrovert. He was someone who didn’t mingle or socialize. I would say he was an unusual artist with unusual style of music and influence. Hearing Coltrane live was like listening to sheets of sound. They’d come thundering at you. At first it would be difficult to absorb but you’d get used to it. At different times I also had Albert Ayler and Eric Dolphy at the Gate. They were unusual and terrific. [Pictured: Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane at the Village Gate, 1961; photo by Herb Snitzer]

JW: Were such pairings bad for business?
AD’L: Not at all. I liked to try different things. When I discovered Tom Lehrer in nearby Washington Square Park, I booked the singer-satirist with Odetta, whose message was much more serious. Putting them on the same bill didn’t click with the audience. But I didn’t lose money.

JW: Did such pairings ever go really bad?
AD’L: The worst combination was pianist Erroll Garner and Leon Bibb, the folk singer. Leon opened the show, and when he finished, Martha Glaser, Erroll’s manager, came up to me and said, “Get that guy out of here.” Apparently Martha or Erroll had such a bad reaction to Leon that either Erroll or Leon had to go. Erroll was the bigger draw, so I had to make nice with Leon, who is a terrific artist. I gave him another booking. After that, Leon appeared at the Gate for a week.

JW: Horace Silver’s Doin’ the Thing was recorded at the Gate in May 1961.
AD’L: Horace [pictured] played the Gate many times. He was terrific. How can anyone forget Filthy McNasty off that album? Stan Getz discovered him. One night I remember Horace tried to pick up my wife. [laughs] Horace was a gentle guy.   

JW: Did Stan Getz play the Gate?
AD’L: Oh sure. Stan was a mashugana. That's Yiddish for a crazy person. He would make bookings and then not show or up or he'd come late. He'd drive me nuts, but I let stuff like that slide because he was such a great musician. My most memorable night at the Gate involves Stan.

JW: What happened?
AD’L: Days after the album Jazz Samba and the single Desafinado were released in 1962, I booked Stan and Charlie Byrd at the Gate. A friend of mine who worked at Colony Records, at the base of the Brill Building, tipped me off. He said the album was incredible and that it was going to be huge. This was the first bossa nova album. So booking them meant I was going to be first one to get them live. I wanted to record the group that weekend, so we negotiated. Charlie Byrd wanted to do it and tried everything to get the deal done. But Stan was a hard ass and just wouldn’t do it. Then I added Bola Sete [pictured], the terrific Brazilian guitarist. So I had Stan, Charlie and Bola playing all the stuff from the Jazz Samba album. The tragedy is that the performances that weekend were never recorded. What a shame.

JW: Did it ever cross your mind to tape them yourself?
AD’L: I never did that. Some club owners did without consulting the artists or getting their permission. I never played that game. I had too much respect for them.

JW: Was the Getz-Byrd-Sete performance great?
AD’L: Unbelievable. That was one of the best bookings of my life. I still hear the music in my head. Stan wanted more money to record, and I just didn’t have it. Stan was the deal breaker. But we always got along. A few days before Stan died in 1991, he called me just to ask how I was doing. Out of the blue. I think in retrospect, he always wished we had recorded that night.

Tomorrow, in Part 2, Art talks about Miles Davis, Nina Simone, Charles Mingus, McCoy Tyner, Gerry Mulligan and Bob Dylan.

JazzWax tracks: Upward of 20 jazz albums were recorded at the Village Gate. Among the best-known are:

Horace Silver: Doin' the Thing at the Village Gate (1961)

Herbie Mann: At the Gate (1961)

Herbie Mann: Returns to the Village Gate (1961)

Herbie Mann: Monday Night at the Village Gate (1965)

Nina Simone: At the Village Gate (1961)

Coleman Hawkins: Alive! at the Village Gate (1962)

Lambert, Hendricks & Bavan: Havin' a Ball at the Village Gate (1963)

Mongo Santamaria: At the Village Gate (1963)

Thelonious Monk: Live at the Village Gate (1963)

Tito Puente: Live at the Village Gate (1992)

Milt Jackson: Live at the Village Gate (1963)

Chris Connor: At the Village Gate (1963)

Jimmy Smith: At the Village Gate (1963)

Sunday Wax Bits

 Following my post on Bill Evans' Alone, Again, in which I assert that the lesser-known 1975 album is the pianist's finest solo recording, Jan Stevens, host of The Bill Evans Web Pages, touched base and pushed back:

"I have to take issue with some observations you made. You called Bill's Here's That Rainy Day  "painfully slow," adding, "It's just a rainy day, not the Johnstown Flood." The humor aside, there are even slower versions, and with greater public prominence, such as Frank Sinatra's and those by various female vocalists as well.  It is a ballad, after all. And a woeful and sad tale of lost love, if you're familiar with Johnny Burke's lyric.

Evans creates that mood on Alone, running the tune in three keys with his patented tone colors in the harmonic movement. He plays with great control and feeling, but then even swings the middle chorus! So your meaning here is unclear to me. It is a celebrated performance among pianists and serious fans, and chosen for one of six complete note-for-note transcriptions for the Artistry of Bill Evans, Vol. 2 piano book.

The other Alone tunes you cite as being "virtually the same pace" as Here's That Rainy Day are also, of course, ballads. Never Let Me Go runs for over 14 minutes. That Bill was totally involved so expressively should be evident. It took up all of Side Two on the original vinyl release.

The reason Alone Again is largely forgotten is that the first Alone album is considered by many to be far superior to it, certainly by many jazz pianists, anyway. There are a few riches to be had in it, but the playing is aggressively harsh and void of his earlier attention to gradations in dynamics in many spots.  Besides, most of the tunes he had done before, and often better.

Please note: Bill's version of People has no improvisation at all. He just played the song several times in various keys (this was specifically cited by the original Down Beat review). It also has a somewhat perfunctory quality, compared to many other solo performances.

You also said Alone, Again "may be one of Evans' finest recordings of the 1970s," which is difficult to accept, even if we are staying with the specifics of the solo things. It would be very hard to compare it to the mesmerizing solo version of Duke Ellington's Reflections in D from the 1978 New Conversations recording, or We Will Meet Again, Bill's heartfelt tribute to his beloved brother Harry from You Must Believe in Spring (recorded in 1977) among others!

I also recommend you listen to Solo Sessions Vols. 1 and 2.  Recorded in late 1963 but released posthumously by producer Orrin Keepnews, these recordings show many other sides of Evans' solo work. Though some of it can be called meandering, and Evans is clearly working internally and even frustratingly on some things, tracks such as Airegin, Our Love Is Here to Stay and All The Things You Are are so engagingly "up" and swinging you can barely catch a breath.

I saw Bill perform live many times in New York and Boston in the 1970s and, with one exception, I recall him playing solo piano each time. Sometimes, it got the loudest applause of all!"

Alone, Again (Again). Reader Raul also suggested I give Bill Evans' Solo Sessions (1963) a re-listen to evaluate Vols. 1 and 2 against Alone and Alone, Again:

"I just read your piece on Bill Evans. In my opinion the Solo Sessions are far superior to Alone. Please pay particular attention to My Favorite Things on Vol. 1. Absolutely sensational."

Autumn in New York. I received quite a few emails last week in response to my two-part post on Vernon Duke's Autumn in New York. Some writers were surprised I left out specific versions while others offered up their own favorites that missed my list:

From Terry Teachout, Wall Street Journal drama critic and author of A Cluster of Sunlight: The Life of Louis Armstrong, due from Harcourt next fall:

"My favorite version is by George Shearing and Brian Torff, on their first duet album for Concord, which also contains Billy Taylor's One for the Woofer. In the coda, Shearing quotes from the slow movement of Rachmaninoff's Second Symphony, gorgeously."

From WKCR-NY disk jockey "Symphony" Sid Gribetz:

The Clifford Brown All Stars Jam Session (EmArcy, 1954) with Clifford Brown (trumpet), Herb Geller and Joe Maini (alto sax), Walter Benton (tenor sax), Kenny Drew (piano), Curtis Counce (bass) and Max Roach (drums).

Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and His Trio (Roost, 1958) with Shirley Scott (organ), George Duvivier (bass) and Arthur Edgehill (drums).

From jazz saxophonist, historian and writer Bill Kirchner:

"I have a special fondness for two versions. One is on George Russell's New York, N.Y. (Decca, 1958), featuring pianist Bill Evans. The other is by Jonathan and Darlene Edwards [comedic pseudonyms for pianist-arranger Paul Weston and singer/wife Jo Stafford]."

From Jazz.com's Alan Kurtz:

"Marc, I am flabbergasted (and, as Steve Allen used to say, if you've ever had your flabber gasted, you know how painful that can be) that you managed to pick 20 recordings of Autumn in New York yet overlooked what is both vocally and instrumentally the finest ever, by the immortal husband and wife team of Jonathan and Darlene Edwards."

From Jason Crane, host of TheJazzSession:

"Great selections all. My favorite is Mel Torme's version from Sunday in New York & Other Songs About New York (Atlantic, 1963)."

From reader Scott Silbert:

"I would add to your list the lovely chart that the late Gene Puerling wrote for the Hi-Lo's on the LP All Over the Place (Columbia, 1960)."

Shorty Rogers. Reader Chuck Diaz emailed his touching memories of trumpeter Shorty Rogers and Bob Andrews, a record store owner on the West Coast:

"What a blast from the past.  I just received West Coast Jazz, the four-CD Shorty Rogers box from Proper Records. Out of the clear blue it mentions Bob Andrews on page 15 of the booklet.  Bob Andrews is the man I met when I was 15 working at the Food Giant market in Hawthorne, CA.  He was managing the record department of a music store that was across the street.  I used to buy all my records from him.

"We became good friends and he is the person who took me to the Lighthouse the first time I went there.  He introduced me to all the Lighthouse All-Stars, and I became a fixture there for a while. In August of 1953 I turned 16 and had my own 1941 Ford and could get to the Lighthouse on my own.

During that same time period Bob opened his own record store on Redondo Beach Blvd. called Recordville. I painted the storefront name on the building on a sign above the building.  I was an art student and also used to paint posters of latest album releases to advertise them in his store. I especially remember one that I did for Shorty’s Cool and Crazy.

Bob also took me to the party that was held at the Lighthouse when Shorty, Jimmy and Shelly left and Bud Shank, Max Roach began. Bob had always treated me so kindly, and he was the primary influence or avenue that brought me to love West Coast Jazz and Shorty Rogers.

I find it amazing that the tapes he made have survived the decades and I’m now hearing them again for the first time in over 50 years. I don't know how old Bob was at the time, but I thought he was in his 30s. Do any of your readers know what happened to him and if he's still alive?"

Sonny Rollins. Reader Alan Kaplinsky asked last week whether I had seen this clip of Sonny Rollins with Leonard Cohen. I hadn't. But here's yet another example of what makes Sonny so special. From The Rolling Stones to Cohen, Sonny comes to play. Bret Primack tells me the clip is from Night Music, a late 1980s TV show that was co-hosted by alto saxophonist David Sanborn.

Billy Taylor. Video maestro Bret Primack sent along links to four juicy segments featuring pianist Billy Taylor from the 1958 TV show The Subject Is Jazz. The links are here, here, here and here.

Benny Golson. Reader David Langer passed along a tip about a recently issued CD featuring two classic Benny Golson albums:

"You've had some great posts lately; I've just been crazy busy and haven't had the chance to tell you. I especially liked the Benny Golson interview, as he is one of my heroes (I play and arrange jazz). A couple of small things: One of the coolest sides Benny was involved with was recently reissued—Brass Shout by Art Farmer, for which Benny wrote some of the most gorgeous brass choir charts for Art. Indeed, this gorgeous record must be heard to be believed. 

To sweeten the deal, Blue Note packaged it with the sister Art Farmer United Artists' album from the same period, The Aztec Suite with compositions and arrangements by Chico O'Farrill. You can see it here."

English recollections. U.K. reader Brian Hope sent along this email:

"I'm sure that I'm too late really in offering my thanks and congratulations, you have already received thousands I'm sure. I have been a jazz fan since about 1943 when I used to run home from school (3 miles) to listen to Duffle Bag on AFN Europe. It was mostly swing then but the bug bit deeply, and I'm still what my children always called a jazz freak. Not a day goes by without my listening avidly (like now, Gerry Mulligan playing Blues Going Up). The depth shown and the contacts made at JazzWax are delightful. May you go on for a very long time. My children increasingly ask me to fill their iPods so it has finally got through, and now I add selections from your columns whenever appropriate. In the past few days I have been reading In the Spirit of Jazz by Otis Ferguson and, like you, he draws me back and expands my education. Wonderful, thank you very much."

Count Basie. Last week (October 6), Michael Steinman, host of JazzLives had a superb post entitled "Basie's Bad Boys," about a four-tune Chicago recording session on February 13, 1939. The tracks appear on Mosaic's Lester Young/Count Basie Sessions 1936-1940 box set.

Johnny Green. David Brent Johnson, host of WFIU's Night Lights, just featured a two-parter on composer Johnny Green (Body and Soul, Out of Nowhere and I Cover the Waterfront) and jazz interpretations of Green's [pictured] songs. As always, the programs were superb. Listen to the podcast for free here.

Clifford Brown's birthday. Mark your calendar. WKCR-FM will celebrate Clifford Brown's birthday on October 30 by playing the trumpeter's recordings for 24 hours. WKCR can be accessed anywhere in the world on the web by going here. In New York, the station is at 89.9 on the FM band.

Oscar Peterson. As part of my monthly series of on-air interviews with disk jockey Ralph Benmergui of Jazz.FM91, Canada's largest jazz radio station, Ralph and I discuss Oscar Peterson and Mosaic's Complete Clef/Mercury Recordings of Oscar Peterson box set. To hear a podcast of last week's radio segment, go here.

(My voice sounds like I'm talking from a shoebox buried inside a linen closet, so I'm researching headsets and other phone gear that will deliver my voice more clearly. If you have recommendations, please email them along.)

Jazziz. I forgot to mention—if you pick up a copy of this month's Jazziz magazine, don't miss Birth of a Blog, the endpager I penned on how JazzWax got its start back in July 2007.

70's Soul Classics, Restored

Soul music of the 1970s is finally being treated like jazz. Instead of allowing the genre to founder on flat-sounding CDs issued in the early 1990s, labels are reaching into their vaults and intelligently remastering the classics. In many cases, these re-issues are receiving the full treatment, complete with updated liner notes and personnel listings. One label that's taking this superb music seriously is Sony Legacy, which just released the first six CDs in its Total Soul Classics series. For me, these CDs are like the reappearance of old friends.

The first round of Total Soul CDs are Here to Create Music (Leon Huff), Wake Up Everybody (Harold Melvin), Back Stabbers (The O'Jays), 360 Degrees of Billy Paul (Billy Paul) and two incomparable albums by Teddy Pendergrass: Teddy Pendergrass and Life Is a Song Worth Singing. All six were originally released on Philadelphia International Records, a label founded in 1971 by prescient songwriters and producers Kenny Gamble and Leon Huff.

Gamble and Huff had great timing. Originally launched to capitalize on the success in 1970 of male singer-seducers Curtis Mayfield (Curtis), Isaac Hayes (The Isaac Hayes Movement) and Tyrone Davis (Turn Back the Hands of Time), Philadelphia International was up and running just as Marvin Gaye's What's Going On and Isaac Hayes' Shaft started breaking album sales records in 1971. [Pictured: Kenny Gamble, seated, and Leon Huff]

Within months of flipping on the lights, Gamble and Huff's label established a winning formula that would become known as the Philly Sound. By 1972, Philadelphia International was a hit-making factory comparable to Sun Records in the 1950s and Motown in the 1960s. Between 1972 and 1973 alone, Philadelphia International was giving rival Atlantic Records a run for its money, charting hits with Me & Mrs. Jones, Back Stabbers, Love Train, If You don't Know Me By Now and I'll Always Love My Mama. More hot-buttered soul hits by single acts and groups would follow.

Behind the independent label's initial success was a knack for pairing jazz-influenced romantic soul with a firm bass line and infectious beat. Lyrics to songs by Gamble and Huff, and McFadden and Whitehead [pictured], typically focused on dating, breaking up, getting back together, couples' emotional needs, and the reasons why relationships weren't working out. Black and white teens and young adults alike identified with the message and new sound. The label also was helped greatly by a shrewd distribution deal with CBS and the advent of 8-track players, which helped make Philly International's albums love themes for road-bound dating couples.

What's more, the warm, romance-friendly Philly Sound came as a welcome relief for a large segment of the young, music-listening market. Until the rise of Philadelphia International, teens left cold by the dominance of Led Zeppelin [pictured], Yes, The Who, Pink Floyd and other icy second British Invasion bands had little in the way of music that reflected their lifestyles or ambitions. 

By putting bear-voiced male singers in touch with their feminine sides, Gamble and Huff took a big chance. Up until the early 1970s, the best-selling mainstream African-American male acts were choreographed groups out of Detroit or kids like Stevie Wonder and the Jackson 5. Backed by full jazz and string orchestras led by Don Renaldo and the MFSB studio band, Philadelphia International's artists combined gospel with a confessional style that resulted in a more mature, personal sound. As arena rock abandoned the dance beats favored by earlier groups, Philly International filled the void, priming the market for soul-based disco that emerged in Philadelphia and Miami in 1974. While Philadelphia International's albums weren't jazz as we know it, the jazz influences could be heard and felt. [Pictured: MFSB]

Standouts among the new Sony CD releases:

Teddy Pendergrass' Teddy Pendergrass (1977). Pendergrass was the lead singer of Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes, and his voice along with Barry White's was among the most significant and influential of the period. It's great to hear once again Teddy's I Don't Love You Anymore, The Whole Town's Laughing at Me and The More I Get, the More I Want. In fact, on a re-listen, the more than 30-year old album was even better than I remembered it.

The O'Jays' Back Stabbers (1972) includes forgotten gems like (They Call Me) Mr. Lucky, Time to Get Down and 992 Arguments as well as the timeless and magnificent Back Stabbers and Love Train. In its remastered form, this one sounds more vibrant and dimensional. A look at the personnel shows that Bobby Eli and Norman Harris, both of whom would go on to launch Blue Magic, are here. Soon-to-be disco legends Don Renaldo and Vince Montana also are on the album along with drummer Earl Young and bassist Ronnie Baker.

Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes' Wake Up Everybody (1975) features the classics Wake Up Everybody, Don't Leave Me This Way and the all-but-forgotten You Know How to Make Me Feel So Good and To Be Free to Be Who We Are. The album remains strong and a showcase for vocalist Teddy Pendergrass.

Teddy Pendergrass' Life Is a Song Worth Singing (1978) was the sterling follow-up to his earlier album. The big hit here was Close the Door, which perfectly exemplified the late Philly sound—a rich male bedroom vocal backed by orchestra and strings coupled with a strong drum beat. Get Down, Get Funky is another rousing sleeper.

Leon Huff's Here to Create Music (1980) is the songwriter's only solo album and an interesting jazz-soul fusion effort. Billy Paul's 360 Degrees of Billy Paul (1972) features the infectious No. 1 hit Me & Mrs. Jones, but the balance of the album's tunes doesn't quite measure up.

Going forward, I'd love to see Sony re-issue additional Philadelphia International albums, especially Archie Bell and the Drells' Dance Your Troubles Away and Harold Melvin & the Blue Notes' To Be True and Black and Blue. All three are soul essentials.

Gerry Mulligan Said it

"People love to say Chet [Baker] couldn't read [music]; he could read. It's not a question of whether he couldn't read chords or anything like that. It's that he didn't care. He had one of the quickest connections between mind, hand and chops that I have ever encountered. He really played by ear, and he could play intricate progressions.

"At my best, I'm playing by ear. But I often am saddled with thinking chords, until I learn a tune. And I have to learn a tune some kind of way. And really, my connection between my ears and my hands is not that quick. Sure, when I've got a tune firmly under hand—which is different from having it firmly in mind—I'm playing by ear. It's taken me a long time to connect up. Chet would get a tune fast, and in any key. He had incredible facility. Remarkable. So it's obvious that at some point in his life, Chet Baker practiced a lot." [Photo: William Claxton]

—Gerry Mulligan, in Gene Lees' Arranging the Score: Portraits of the Great Arrangers