JazzWax

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 5)

On her most recent album, Wishing on the Moon (Sunnyside), singer Meredith d'Ambrosio decided to record all originals— words and music. Here, you get to experience the full effect of Meredith's poetic talents as a lyricist and writer of hip melodies. By the second song you realize how underrated she is as a composer and wordsmith. [Photo: Meredith and her late husband and pianist Eddie Higgins in 2001]

For example, here are the words to Have You Noticed:

Strange how the time goes racing by.
It seems to be willing us to fly
to our clandestine destiny.
Until then I can only
dream about your kiss. And lately
I feel your presence all around me.
Have you noticed the same sensation, too?

Dig how the words "clandestine" and "destiny" dovetail. Or on the recording how Meredith impulsively whisper-scats during trumpeter Don Sickler's outro. Or listen to the breathless phrasing she uses on the title track. Each of the album's 10 songs has this same level of mischievous whimsy and hammering sensitivity. Meredith clearly is the last in line of a generation of post-modern songwriters that include Blossom Dearie, Dave Frishberg and Bob Dorough.

In Part 5 of my interview series with Meredith, the legendary jazz vocalist talks about the creative process, trying to overcome shyness, meeting Miles Davis, becoming friends with Horace Silver and how she met her husband Eddie Higgins:

JazzWax: What goes through your mind when you’re recording?
Meredith d'Ambrosio: Trying to get everything right. I rarely do more than two takes. Sometimes I’ll get stuck on one tune, and it will take a while. But I want the initial innocence or vulnerability or rawness that comes the first time around to be preserved.

JW: Do you think more about the words or the music?
Md’A: I’m thinking about what the words mean but I’m more of a music person. I get carried away by the music that I hear while I’m singing. That music is very important. Like when pianist Lee Musiker plays behind me. Or Don Sickler [pictured] and the rest of the group on my latest album. I’m not a traditional singer.

JW: Not a singer?
Md’A: I don’t have the pipes. I only think from within. I’m not thinking about what I sound like. I’m already me. All I have to worry about is not breathing in the wrong places. If I breathe in the middle of a phrase, that’s a no-no. So I’m always thinking about phrasing and how to break it up so it will flow.

JW: Which comes first when you write, melody or lyrics?
Md'A: When I first started to record, I realized I shouldn’t be breaking up my phrases. So my words are wrapping around the music. When I write a song, the music comes first. Each melody note dictates what the word should be—the whole story of the song, the phrase, the poetry. I get lost in the melody and chord.

JW: You say you're shy but yet you spent years performing in front of audiences.
Md’A: There's shy and there's stage fear. I've overcome the latter. I had to. When I was very young, my mother used to make me stand next to her when she performed in Boston at the Hampshire House [pictured] and sing Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart tunes. Little by little she taught me to be brave.

JW: What was the turning point in your career?
Md'A: I think Little Jazz Bird in 1982 with Phil Woods, Hank Jones and Manny Albam. It got airplay all over the world. When I toured in Paris, they treated me like a queen. The second time I went over, Miles Davis and I were on the same bill. Can you imagine? This was 1986 at the Paris Jazz Festival. Miles was in his rock-and-roll phase.

JW: Had you met Davis before?
Md'A: Yes, years earlier. Miles sat with me when he was working at the Jazz Workshop in Boston and I was playing the Inner Circle upstairs. Miles was very angry at the table when he sat with me on his break. I had come downstairs to hear him. But during the little time we spent together, he softened after learning that I was a jazz singer-pianist.
 
JW: What was your biggest thrill?
Md’A: When Horace Silver dropped in to see me in 1967 at the Inner Circle. He saw my picture outside and came in. I had a four-night a week job there. Horace sat right in front of me while I was at the upright piano they had made to look like a grand piano for me [laughs]. I couldn't believe he was there. He asked from the audience if I could play Some Other Spring. It was his favorite song.

JW: Did you?
Md’A: Yes, and he loved it. I was so embarrassed because of my lack of chops. After that we became friends. My mom had just committed suicide and he was concerned about me.

JW: But you and your mother didn't get along.
Md'A: Yes, but despite all that my mother and I had been through, I sobbed about her for five years after her death. Years after meeting Horace, when I was still in Boston, he asked me to come to New York. So I took a train down, and Horace took me to see Reverend Beulah Brown up in Harlem. Reverend Brown was a minister Horace had known for years, but she was also a medium who claimed to communicate with the dead. I think that’s where Horace got his church sound, through her funky feeling and way of talking.

JW: What did Reverend Brown tell you?
Md’A: She said, “You have to let your mother go. She has to get on to another life.” She told me I was keeping my mother earthbound. So I let her go, and I stopped sobbing. It was amazing.

JW: Where did you meet your late husband, pianist Eddie Higgins?
Md’A: I met him 22 years ago. He had heard four tunes of mine that deejay Ron Della Chiesa played in a row on WGBH in Boston. They were four tracks from four different albums. After, Ron announced that I was playing at a place called the Asa Bearse House in Hyannis on Cape Cod. Eddie also had played there, so he knew where it was. I was working the room three days a week, and pianist Dave McKenna worked three days. One night Eddie [known to friends as Haydn] walked in and asked me to do a song. [Pictured: Haydn in Paris, watercolor, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: What did he want you to sing and play?
Md’A: Well, I thought he had asked me to play You Light Up My Life [the Debby Boone pop hit]. I told him I didn’t do those kinds of songs [laughs].

JW: He was putting you on, no?
Md’A: No, no [laughs]. I hadn't understood what he had said. He had asked for a Brazilian tune called Someone to Light Up My Life. I didn’t know much about Brazilian music at the time. So he tried another song, by Duke Ellington, called All Too Soon. I sang it, a bit puzzled about his taste after his first request.

JW: What happened next?
Md'A: That evening, I ended up standing during my last set singing while he accompanied me on piano. After that we became close friends. Six weeks later we kissed goodnight for the first time. We became engaged two weeks after that and married the following year in the woods on Cape Cod. It was July 28, 1988, the anniversary of our first meeting We were happily married the entire time right up until he died this past August. [Pictured: After Dawn, oil on canvas, 2007, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: So, are you going to record another album soon?
Md’A: I would love to, but only if I could have my choice of songs. I don't even know if a record label today would be interested in me.

JazzWax tracks: In 1997, Meredith recorded Echo of a Kiss with Mike Renzi (piano), Jay Leonhart (bass), and Terry Clarke (drums). There are two Bill Evans songs here—Time Remembered, with Paul Lewis' lyrics, and Blue in Green, with words by Meredith. The title tune, by pianist Denny Zeitlin, also features Meredith's lyrics. Renzi's piano takes on shades of both pianists. Another powerful track is Claude Thornhill's Snowfall. Meredith captures the sighing melody perfectly but with a hint of urgency, and Renzi's chords here are sensational. The lyrics are by Meredith.

Out of Nowhere was recorded the following year, in 1998. This time,  Meredith was accompanied by Lee Musiker (piano), Jay Leonhart (bass), Terry Clarke (drums) and Michael Leonhart on trumpet on two tracks. Musiker's mood-setting intros and fills behind Meredith are exceptional, particularly on Easy Come Easy Go and All In Fun.

Love Is for the Birds (2002) was the first album of Meredith's own work. Among the highlights are Beloved (which is Daahoud set to words), Just a Dream and the touching Blame It All on Spring. Meredith was backed by Lee Musiker, (piano), Jay Leonhart, (bass) and Joe Ascione (drums), with Don Sickler (trumpet and flugelhorn), John Allred (trombone) and Bob Kindred (tenor sax and flute) added on tracks.

All are available as iTunes or Amazon downloads or on CD here,  here and here. Wishing on the Moon (2006), also is available as a download or on CD here. And a book of Meredith's artwork is available here.

Art exhibit and performance: Starting next Thursday (September 24th) in Miami, radio station WDNA (88.9 FM) will be exhibiting 35 of Meredith's watercolors and oil paintings. Meredith also will be singing, accompanied by pianist Patti Wicks. For more information and ticket prices, go here.

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 4)

Meredith d'Ambrosio's voice comes closest to Bill Evans' sound on the piano of any vocalists I know. Both artists' recorded works are deeply poetic and worship space. Unfortunately, Evans and Meredith never recorded together, though the union would have been a near-perfect marriage of styles. By the time Meredith was recording in earnest in the 1980s, Evans, of course, had already died. You can hear what I mean about the closeness of the approach in the Evans-favored songs that Meredith has recorded over the years. These include Blue in Green, Turn Out the Stars, Quiet Now, Young and Foolish, I Should Care and My Romance.

Up until now, the stark "Little Nell" story of Meredith's life has dominated my interview. This has been deliberate. Like many of Meredith's fans, I have always wondered about the origin of her extraordinary depth and tenderness. Clearly, Meredith has had more than her share of hard knocks and emotional stress, and draws on these experiences in the studio. [Pictured: Thalia's Arbor, oil on canvas, 2008, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

 In Part 4 of my interview series with Meredith, the legendary jazz singer tells why recording her first album occurred relatively late in her career, the role that singer Johnny Hartman played in making that recording happen, meeting Bill Evans in Boston, and what pianist Pat Smythe taught her about chord voicings:

JazzWax: Your first album, Lost in His Arms, was recorded in 1978, at age 37. That’s pretty late for an artist with your talents.
Meredith d'Ambrosio: I didn’t want to be out there on an album. But I was duped [laughs]. The piano tuner who worked at the Longview Farm Recording Studios near Boston had free reign of the studio one day. Just for fun—or so he said at the time—he wanted me to come out and sing and accompany myself on piano. So I did.

JW: What happened?
Md'A: I recorded 35 songs in a seven-hour period—mostly one take for each song. The guitarist, Norman Coles, sat in on two tunes. We chose 15 cuts to put on a tape for a possible album. The tuner would have become my manager, but he passed away soon after that. I think he was there to guide me for a moment.

JW: What happened to the tape?
Md’A: Ron Della Chiesa invited me to come on his WGBH-FM radio show, Music America, to play the tape. Johnny Hartman [pictured] was also being interviewed by Ron that day. When the tape played, it sounded like an album. When Johnny heard it, he couldn't believe it wasn't. Johnny insisted on taking the tape to New York to play for a record producer he knew. Johnny thought it should be an album. I was surprised he was so kind to me. I was a fan of his.

JW: How did pianist Ray Santisi wind up on the album?
Md'A: Later, Ray, who is a great pianist from Boston, came to the recording studio and we recorded two songs. We added those extra tunes to the tape. It spiced up the album, since I never considered my playing to be anything but sparse. Wil Morton of Shiah Records bought the master. I recorded two albums with Shiah before receiving a call from Herb Wong [pictured] at Palo Alto Records. He asked me to record my third album, Little Jazz Bird, for him, and I did.

JW: Your voice has been compared to Bill Evans’ playing, particularly his sensitive, lyrical feel.
Md’A: I know. I guess there's a similarity in the quality of tone and voice. I first met Bill in the mid-1960s when he was in Boston playing at the Jazz Workshop. I was sitting with Fred Taylor, the club’s owner, whom I’ve known since I was a kid. Bill came over and sat with us. He was so shy. He hardly said anything, and I immediately identified with him because I’m the same way. I didn’t want to be out there in the world playing and singing. I don’t think Bill did either, deep down. But he had a natural talent that couldn’t be hidden away.

JW: As a pianist and singer, did his sound affect you?
Md'A: I was in awe of his genius. Listening to him play, I hung on every note, every phrase, every chord. I knew  instantly that I was in the presence of someone from another planet. Our conversations, as I look back, seemed more telepathic than verbal. Something happened to me after talking with him and hearing him there that first night. I completely understood his concept of chords, and I changed musically in a noticeable way.

JW: What isn’t well known about Evans?
Md’A: Probably that one of his sources of early inspiration was British pianist Pat Smythe. When I was living in New York in 1980 at [English composer] Richard Rodney Bennett's home, I became friends with Pat. He allowed me to pick his brain, but all I needed to do was watch his fingers.

JW: What did you learn?
Md'A:  Pat [pictured] showed me chord voicings on the piano that were even more advanced than those used by Bill Evans. When I told Pat that the voicings sounded like Bill's, he said he used to sit with Bill in his London home and fool around on the piano when Bill first visited England in 1965. Pat said he showed Bill how he voiced chords, and Bill adapted some of that knowledge. He said that Bill learned from him that there was no limit to how many notes in a chord one could play if all 10 fingers were used at once.

JW: What did Smythe teach you?
Md’A: That nothing on the keyboard is impossible. The key is to use all of your fingers at once. I soon found myself using one finger on two notes, which helps make a fuller sounding chord. I’m not proficient at the piano, but Pat taught me enough so I could get a certain sound and contrast to my deep voice. A chord using five notes would sound mysterious and full because of the placement of the fingers on an altered tension chord voicing, for example. Pat helped me realize that there are no limits. [Pictured: Daniels Island, Early Autumn, oil on canvas, 2005, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

Tomorrow, in the final part of my interview, Meredith talks about what goes through her mind during the creative process, her struggle with shyness, what song Horace Silver requested when he first saw her perform, where Silver took her to help her overcome her grief after her mother's suicide, and reflections on Meredith's late husband pianist Eddie Higgins.

JazzWax tracks: In 1990, Meredith recorded Love Is Not a Game, her most beautiful and introspective album up until that point. It was recorded with her late husband Eddie Higgins on piano, Rufus Reid on bass and Keith Copeland on drums. Tracks like Heaven Sent and Get Used to It Baby say it all. There also are great standards here, like Young and Foolish and Indian Summer, as well as fabulous offbeat tunes. And if you want to hear Meredith's piano voicings, dig her chords on the title track, the only one on which she plays piano. Wow.

A year later, in 1991, Meredith recorded her most tender album: Sleep Warm. Recorded at her home in Florida, the entire album consists of lullabies and touching originals written for her grandchildren. Listen to the beauty of Emmalyne, for example. Meredith sings and accompanies herself throughout on piano. The entire affair is like one tall glass of warm milk.

Shadowland (1992) put Meredith together again with husband and pianist Eddie Higgins. Also on the date was Blair Tindall (English horn and oboe), Ron Kozak (bass clarinet and flute), Johnny Frigo (violin), Erik Friedlander (cello), Jay Leonhart (bass) and Ben Riley (drums). This is about as close as Meredith has come to recording with an orchestral backdrop. The instrumental configuration works best on songs like A Rainy Afternoon, Ces Jours Tranquilles and In My Uncertain World.

On Beware of Spring! (1994), Meredith returned to the trio format, with Eddie Higgins (piano) George Mraz (bass) Jeff Hirshfield (drums). Higgins' song introductions are so pretty. Take Dearly Beloved or Moon Dreams, for example. Piano accompaniment doesn't get any lovelier than Higgins and Meredith working together here.

For Silent Passion (1996), Meredith accompanied herself on piano and was joined only by guitarist Gene Bertoncini. Dig what she does with Johnny Mandel's The Shining Sea. Absolutely breathtaking and certainly a contender for top version. Or Spring Isn't Everything. A pure passion play.

And yes, all of the album cover art is by Meredith.

JazzWax clip: I wish I had more Meredith on YouTube to share with you. Instead, here's a clip of Autumn Leaves by her late husband, Eddie Higgins...

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 3)

When you first speak with vocalist Meredith d'Ambrosio, you hear a shyness that comes when artists devote most of the their waking hours to their work and little time interacting with others. But Meredith is no mouse. Spend time with her and you hear a distinct take-charge sensibility, a gentle get-it-done mindset that has served her well as a jazz singer, pianist, composer, lyricist and visual artist. [Photo: Meredith playing and singing at Boston's Camelot Lounge in 1966]

During the 1960s, Meredith began to make a name for herself as a jazz singer-pianist, accompanying herself at clubs in the Boston area. But she also was a single mother, with all of the joys and hardship that come with that status. Which meant she had to leverage her talents as a visual artist and musician to make ends meet. Caught between the drama in her personal life and yearning to express herself artistically, Meredith managed to keep the two sides of her life separate, which is probably what kept her from burning out emotionally.  [Pictured: Popponnesett, watercolor, 1994, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

In Part 3 of my interview with Meredith, the legendary jazz vocalist talks about the birth of her child, the battle with her ex-husband for custody, the death of her mother, estrangement with her father, breakfast with John Coltrane, and why she wasn't able to go on tour with the Coltrane Quintet to Japan in 1966:

JazzWax: Did your heart repair itself after your parents chased off the grifter who proposed to you?
Meredith d’Ambrosio: Yes. Two years later, in 1960, when I was 19, I met a man and agreed to marry him. I  didn’t love him at the time but I assumed I would learn to love him. He didn’t want children but I did. Three months after we were married, I was pregnant. Cyd was born in 1961, and about a year and a half later I divorced my husband and moved back in with my parents. At this point they were living in Newton, just outside of Boston. [Pictured: Apiary, watercolor, 1986, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: How did you make money?
Md’A: By doing calligraphy for wedding invitations and  envelopes and diplomas, citations and illuminating scrolls. I also sang at the Hunt Room at the Beaconsfield Hotel [pictured] in Brookline, MA. Then I landed a better job singing and playing at the Charter House in Newton, which paid me $100 for five nights. Once again, I decided to leave home, at which point my mother generously told me, “You’ll never make it.”

JW: So you’re divorced with a two-year-old baby, and you’re scuffling to make ends meet?
Md’A:  Yes. Soon I began dating a lawyer, and we lived together for three years in Boston. Then I found out he was cheating on me, so I asked him to leave. Soon after I went to Austin, Texas, for two weeks to sing and play at a jazz room there. I left my daughter Cyd with her father in Boston.

JW: What happened when you returned?
Md'A: After I got back to Boston two weeks later, my ex-husband and his new wife wanted to keep Cyd. They wouldn't let me take her back, even after I found steady work in Boston. Then I learned that they were attempting to adopt her. My ex-husband thought Cyd wouldn’t be well cared for by me because there was no backyard for her to play in where I lived. This was a very sad time for me. [Pictured: Glen Lake, oil on canvas, 2006, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: What did you do?
Md'A: I stole Cyd back from my ex-husband's house with my dad's help. I pretended that I was going to take her to the movies. A huge custody battle followed. I won, and my former husband in response chose not to see Cyd for years, until she was 11 years old. I continued to make ends meet with calligraphy and by selling my eggshell mosaics.

JW: During this time, what was going on with your parents?
Md’A: My father divorced my mother in 1967. A year later she committed suicide by running the motor while sitting in the car in the garage. My sister Elaine, who was 11 at the time, found her.

JW: And your dad?
Md'A: My father remarried in 1970, but I never got along with his new wife. He became increasingly cruel to my sister Elaine and brother Stanley. It got so bad that my father asked them to leave his house. [Pictured: Traffic Signal #1, eggshell mosaic, 1972, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: Where were you living?
Md’A: In Newton, MA, with Cyd. To pay the bills, I accepted assistance from Aid to Families with Dependent Children, a federal program at the time. But I also had to take in my brother and sister. The AFDC didn't provide me with enough to support everyone.

JW: What did you do?
Md'A: I sued my father for support and won. Then he disowned me. Soon I found another job singing and playing and working as a calligrapher.

JW: What eventually happened with your daughter Cyd?
Md’A: She became pregnant and married, but she couldn’t cope. In 1981 she had a nervous breakdown and  left her two-year-old baby with her husband. Later Cyd moved into my apartment on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Once she got her bearings, she tried to return to her husband and daughter, Davina, in Revere, MA. But her husband and his family barred her from visitation. They even cut me off from visiting my granddaughter and changed their phone number. [Pictured: White Mountains Birches, watercolor, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: That must have been painful for you.
Md'A: It was. In 1991, my granddaughter Davina called me for the first time. She had tracked me down in an effort to learn more about her mother. Today I speak with Cyd and my granddaughter Emmalyne and grandson Emmanuel every day. Davina hasn't been as close to me or her siblings for unknown reasons. That's her choice. I did recently learn, though, that Davina now has three children, which makes me a great-grandmother. [Pictured: October, watercolor, 1999, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: Clearly all of these events have shaped who you are as an artist, especially as a jazz singer.
Md’A: It’s all in there someplace, I suppose [laughs].

JW: Returning to the 1960s, you had breakfast with John Coltrane in late 1965?
Md’A: Yes. I went to hear him play at Boston's Jazz Workshop with McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and Elvin Jones over a series of nights. I knew his Boston manager, Robin Hemingway, who took me to see them. After the gig one night, Coltrane, Robin and I went to Ken's, a coffee shop nearby in Copley Square, for breakfast. We sat there till 3 a.m. talking. I was told later that John never laughed or smiled. But during our time at Ken's, he was laughing and enjoying himself the entire time. I was happy to know that I was able to amuse him.

JW: Did he hear you sing?
Md’A: Yes, he asked me to sing something for him, and I did. After I finished singing at the table, he was so moved he asked me to come with him to Japan and sing with the group.

JW: Was he serious?
Md’A: Very. But Cyd was just four years old, and I was living with my parents after escaping my marriage. I explained why I couldn't go with him. John understood.

JW: Do you regret the decision?
Md’A: Oh, goodness, not at all. I never think about what might have been. I was and still am a very shy person. I didn’t want to venture away from Boston at the time.

JW: Shy?
Md’A: You have to understand, I didn’t want music in my life professionally. I thought of myself as a visual artist. I’m a thinker, not a talker. I’m introspective, all day and all night. To this day I hide away in my house painting, composing and writing lyrics to my compositions, or other people's melodies. [Pictured: Top of the Island, watercolor, 2000, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

Tomorrow, Meredith talks about her first recording, meeting bill Evans, the musical connection between British pianist Pat Smythe and Evans, and what Smythe taught her about chord voicings.

JazzWax tracks: Following her critically acclaimed Little Jazz Bird (1982), Meredith recorded It's Your Dance (1985), which includes fabulous versions of Dave Brubeck's Strange Meadowlark (with Meredith's lyrics), Yip Harburg and Vernon Duke's Off Again On Again, Johnny Burke and Jimmy Van Heusen's Humpty Dumpty Heart and a rendition of Nobody Else But Me (Hammerstein and Kern) that rivals Joe Mooney's.

The Cove (1987) followed with Lee Konitz (alto sax), Fred Hersch (piano), Michael Formanek (bass) and Keith Copeland (drums). The album's title relates to "the hollow of a man's shoulder where a woman can rest her head and snuggle up in. It's like a little secret place," Meredith says in the liner notes. Her voice is suddenly deeper and more confident. There are fabulous versions of Bill Evans' Turn Out the Stars and Thunderstruck.

The first album Meredith recorded after marrying pianist Eddie Higgins, who died on August 30th, was South to a Warmer Place (1989). In addition to Eddie, Meredith was accompanied by Lou Columbo (trumpet), Don Coffman (bass) and Danny Burger (drums). Everything on this album is perfect. There's a conversational You Better Go Now, a mid-tempo The Touch of Your Lips and a lush reading of the title track. The album also includes My Shining Hour, an uncharacteristically fast-tempo tune, which Meredith handles smoothly.

All are available as downloads at iTunes and Amazon. Or on CD here, here and here.

Art exhibit and performance: Starting next Thursday (September 24th) in Miami, radio station WDNA (88.9 FM) will be exhibiting 35 of Meredith's watercolors and oil paintings. Meredith also will be performing, accompanied by pianist Patti Wicks. For more information and ticket prices, go here.

And for more about Meredith and her paintings, go here. 

JazzWax clip: To hear how tasteful Meredith's late husband Eddie Higgins was, dig this...

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 2)

Meredith d'Ambrosio's life reads like an Edith Wharton novel. For years, the Boston vocalist struggled with a mother and father who rarely spoke to each other, leaving her somewhat unprepared to deal with an early love and then a marriage that quickly fizzled. Through it all, Meredith managed to remain focused on studying visual arts, a safe harbor of sorts from the tension and strife in her personal life. Part of the difficulty at home was that Meredith's mother had to cope with two newborns in her 40s, a relentlessly unfaithful husband, and punishing anxiety.

By the late 1950s and early 1960s, while still an art student, Meredith began to get jobs singing and playing piano at Boston jazz clubs. She also began hanging out at the New England Conservatory of Music, where she met pianist Roger Kellaway [pictured]. But pressing family responsibilities kept her from breaking completely free from home life.

In Part 2 of my interview with Meredith, the legendary jazz vocalist talks about her challenging relationship with her mother, a suitor who turned out to be a grifter, developing her eggshell mosaics technique, singing with pianist Roger Kellaway and bandleader Maynard Ferguson, and why she had eventually had to move home again:

JazzWax: Just before college began in 1958, you and your mother fought regularly. What was her big issue with you?
Meredith d'Ambrosio: Several things. For one, I couldn’t hold a waitress job in Maine over the summer to pay for textbooks, and my mother was furious that I didn’t apply myself and take the job more seriously. Just before my studies began at the Boston Museum School, our disagreements grew so bad and so frequent that I moved out.

JW: Did you enjoy the Boston Museum School?
Md’A: I loved it. But even before college started, my life was complicated, which certainly didn't help matters with my mother. When I was 17, I had the misfortune of falling deeply in love with a man who was a jazz pianist and three years older than I was. He asked me to marry him, and we became engaged. But soon I learned from his closest friend that within a two-year period, he had been engaged to 22 other women. He disappeared soon after I found out. I think my parents chased him away once they learned about his past. It took me many years to get over the emotional devastation of being deceived by someone who I thought was my soulmate. I had even thought about suicide. By then I had moved back home. [Pictured: First Snow, oil on canvas, 2008, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: You must have fallen pretty hard for the guy.
Md’A: [Laughs] That was only the half of it. Two years  later, the same guy called and asked if I’d go to Europe with him. I turned him down, having learned my lesson. Or so I thought. Then, 18 years later, he called me again, this time from Colorado. We began to date when he came to Boston. He proposed to me again, I accepted, and I sold everything I owned to move out there with him. He took some of my eggshell mosaics to Denver to see if he could find an exclusive gallery for my works. I had been doing the mosaics since I was 18 years old. [Pictured: After the Blizzard of '78, eggshell mosaic, 1978, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: What are eggshell mosaics?
Md’A: It’s a technique I developed. On a thick wooden board, I make a sketch. After tearing the membrane from white eggshells, I paint the shells, crack them into small tessera [tiles], apply medium-rough mosaic cement in small areas to the board, and one by one, place each small painted eggshell onto the cement using a tweezer. Polyurethane is painted on the back to prevent warpage. The result is an image composed of painted eggshells.

JW: So what happened with the guy?
Md’A: I didn’t hear from him for two weeks after he left. When I called his brother to see if anything had happened to him, his brother told me he was engaged to another woman and a wedding was planned.

JW: That must have crushed you, to be duped twice like that.
Md’A: I was pretty shocked. I never thought I was going to get over him. But I did eventually—12 years later.

JW: Getting back to your college years, did you and your mother patch things up once you moved back home?
Md’A: After my first year at school, my mom and I resumed fighting bitterly. So I moved out again—into the basement apartment of a girlfriend. But she made my life miserable. She was a terrible bully. I had gone back to work at the hearing-aid factory to make ends meet and had to walk home from work in the bitter cold winter. Eventually I came down with pleurisy and bronchitis, which resulted in walking pneumonia. Eventually I got well. [Pictured: Elm Street Blizzard, watercolor, 2003, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: Were you still listening to jazz during all of this turmoil?
Md’A: Oh Yes. Horace Silver’s records in 1952 had first awakened me to jazz. The only way I could play chords was to try to emulate them while I was listening to his records. I was so taken with what he was doing. I also was aware of jazz through radio shows in Boston hosted by Symphony Sid and Father Norman J. O'Connor, the so-called jazz priest. I realized immediately this wasn’t swing like the music on my mother's records. It was straight-ahead jazz. And I loved it.

JW: What were you listening to in Silver's records?
Md'A: I heard the chords Horace was playing and was able to figure out his voicings. Art Tatum, too. He had full, full chords. I've always been able to hear the detail in recordings and figure out on the piano what I was hearing. When I went to Schillinger House in 1952 and 1953, I was taught basic chords. But by separating those chords, I could figure out what Silver was doing.

JW: By the late 1950s, were you good enough to get work playing and singing?
Md’A: Yes. I eventually found work playing at jazz clubs in Boston in 1959, when I was 18 years old. I also became friendly with the guys in Gunther Schuller’s jazz group at the New England Conservatory of Music. That’s where I met pianist Roger Kellaway. He would perform at clubs and ask me to sing while he played. We’d often go to Storyville, the Stables and the Crystal Club in Milford, MA, to hear Boots Mussulli [pictured], Conte Candoli and Serge Chaloff and to the Stables to hear Varty Haroutunian with Ray Santisi, Herb Pomeroy and others.

JW: You sang with Maynard Ferguson’s big band at a club?
Md’A: Yes. Maynard [pictured] was at the Crystal Club one night with his big band. Roger [Kellaway] said something to him, and Maynard asked me to sing with the band. We did I Got It Bad (And That Ain’t Good) and I Cover the Waterfront. Fortunately I was able to sing in the key in which they played. That was the first time I had sung with a big band. Maynard loved it, and so did the audience. Roger was very encouraging, and he remains a beautiful pianist. We had a Jackie and Roy thing going. We had many of those kinds of arrangements. He made me work hard, though, and I’m grateful for that.

JW: What did your mother think about your flowering jazz career?
Md’A: Not much. There still was no encouragement from her. Around this time she started to suffer terribly from depression and had another nervous breakdown. So I had to return home yet again to care for my youngest brother and sister. I became their surrogate mother. [Pictured: Popponesset Spit, oil on canvas, 2007, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: Did being pulled away from your art, singing and playing upset you or stress you out?
Md’A: No. For whatever reason, my mother's issues and my family chores never really pulled me away from my goals. I compartmentalized the two and never felt stress.

Tomorrow, Meredith talks about her first marriage, the birth of her daughter Cyd when she was 20 years old, her divorce and custody battle that ensued, an early-morning breakfast with John Coltrane and an invitation to tour with him, and why she had to turn him down.

JazzWax tracks: Meredith's first album, Lost in His Arms (1978) was followed by Another Time (1981) and Little Jazz Bird (1982), which put her on the map as a jazz singer. Meredith was joined on the album by Phil Woods (alto sax), Hank Jones (piano), Steve Gilmore (bass), Bill Goodwin (drums) and a string section that featured Gene Orloff, Fred Buldrini, Fred Slatkin and Julian Barber. Manny Albam arranged and conducted the date.

Little Jazz Bird includes Deborah Henson-Conant's How Is Your Wife (with Meredith on piano) and When the End Comes, both perfectly suited to Meredith's fireplace-warm voice. Phil Woods has a wonderful clarinet solo on I'll Only Miss Him When I Think of Him, and Meredith's version of There's a Lull in My Life is among the best you'll hear.

Little Jazz Bird is a download at iTunes and Amazon. Or on CD here used for a reasonable price.

Art exhibit and performance: If you're in Miami next Thursday (September 24th), swing over to the gallery at radio station WDNA (88.9 FM) to see the opening of Meredith's latest exhibit of 35 watercolors and oil paintings. Meredith also will be performing accompanied by pianist Patti Wicks. For more information and ticket prices, go here.

And for more about Meredith and her paintings, go here. [Pictured above: Ancient Stairs, Auvers-sur-Oise, oil on canvas, 2008, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JazzWax clip: Tacked onto the end of the Little Jazz Bird CD is The Christmas Waltz, which was recorded by Meredith with Hank Jones in 1980 for a compilation of various artists singing holiday songs. I know it's way early in the season, but please indulge me. Meredith's version is irresistible...

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 1)

Over the summer I received a sweet e-mail from Meredith  d'Ambrosio thanking me for including her in a roundup of superb vocal versions of Bill Evans songs. You may not be familiar with the vocalist, but what's about to happen to you happened to me in the mid-1990s. Back then, a friend gave me a copy of It's Your Dance with a warning: "You're going to listen to this and feel as if you've known this singer all your life." When I put on Giant Steps and The Underdog from the album, I was indeed swept away. Meredith's hip sensitivity and breezy intensity was unlike anything I had heard, except maybe for Irene Kral's albums from the 1970s with pianist Alan Broadbent.

Fourteen years later, my love for Meredith's knowing voice is still raging. If you have a heart, it's impossible not to be overcome by her phrasing, song choices and piano playing. Her voice is so pure and unfettered it's as if she's channeling the spring rain, summer shadows and autumn mist. What you hear is enormous intelligence and a childlike abandon, which is likely why John Coltrane asked her to tour with him in the early 1960s. What you're actually hearing is a complete artist: Meredith not only is a singer with unparalleled gifts but also a fine painter, a lyricist, a composer and a jazz pianist. And she excels at each. [Pictured: Eastern Point Light (Cape Ann), 2009, oil on canvas by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

In Part 1 of my five-part interview with Meredith, 68, one of jazz's best-kept secrets, the legendary singer talks candidly about her early upbringing in Boston, her early singing talents, her mother and father's fights, and leaving home for art school at age 17:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Meredith d’Ambrosio: I grew up in Boston. I have two  brothers and a sister. One brother and my sister are quite a bit younger than I am. My mother had them late in life. My mother was a pianist-singer whose voice was similar to Lee Wiley’s. She performed around Boston using the stage name Sherry Linden. Her real name was Sarah Kleiman. She was the last of the red-hot mamas, a performer who sang songs by the Gershwins, Rodgers and Hart, Kern, Berlin, Coward and others. She also performed risqué material.

JW: Sounds like she was quite a character.
Md’A: She was. Her romantic style of singing would often bring tears to people's eyes. As for my father, he had been a small-band radio singer. Later, using his own formulas, he created a refinishing and re-upholstery business. I remember my early childhood in the 1940s vividly. I was a terrible tomboy. Those are the years I remember most fondly.

JW: Why? Were your teenage years unhappy?
Md’A: Very messy. My mother and father didn’t get along, and neither gave me much encouragement. My father was a womanizer and it broke my mother’s heart. She resented him terribly for it. My father's issues probably stem from his rough start in life.

JW: What happened?
Md’A: He was born out of wedlock in Boston to a Russian mother and a merchant seaman from Florence, Italy. His mother gave him up to the care of the state when he was five. After years bouncing around foster homes, orphanages and farms, he was sent at age 14 to live at the home of a family on Cape Cod. But just as the family was ready to adopt him, his mother surfaced and blocked the adoption. Up until then my father thought she was dead.

JW: Did his mother take him away?
Md’A: Yes. She took him to live with her in the Beacon Hill section of Boston, where it turned out she was the town madam who ran her business out of a four- story townhouse. Just before she took my father back to Boston, though, she married a man whose last name was d’Ambrosio.

JW: When did you know you could sing?
Md’A: When I was six years old, I was harmonizing along with my mother’s large collection of swing records. I then studied classical piano and art from that point forward. My classical training lasted up to age 11. Then I went to Boston’s Schillinger House of Music [pictured], which later changed its name to Berklee School and then moved to become the Berklee College of Music.

JW: Which singers moved you most as a kid?
Md’A: Dick Haymes [pictured] and Peggy Lee. My mother had a collection of 12-inch swing records that had to be played on a Victrola. I thought Haymes had the best phrasing of them all and the most romantic voice.

JW: Did you have formal voice training?
Md’A: No, my father wouldn’t allow it. He was a bass baritone and had been classically trained at the New England Conservatory of Music. When he heard me singing and harmonizing along with my mother’s records at age 11, he decided voice training would be bad for me. He didn’t want my voice to be spoiled with formal instruction, though he had a hand in coaching me to understand how to breathe and shade.

JW: What did you sound like?
Md’D: I had a style back then, a voice that no one else sounded like. Back then I was a mezzo-soprano—the same range as my mother's. My father was afraid that I would wind up trying to sound like other singers if I had formal training. Much later I became a tenor, the same range as a cello or flugelhorn.

JW: Did painting and visual art play a more important role in your youth than singing and playing piano?
Md’A: Yes, and it still does. When I was 5 years old, in kindergarten, I drew a picture of a face that I thought was in perfect proportion. I immediately sensed I had an advanced talent. So my mother bought me an easel, and a year later I started taking formal art instruction. After school, I’d take piano and ballet lessons. And each Saturday I’d go for additional art lessons at the Rutledge School of Music and then Hebrew School. I had no time to play on the streets. It was a grueling schedule. [Pictured: Quarter to Three, 1986, watercolor, Meredith d'Ambrosio]

JW: Was your family well off?
Md’A: Actually no. When I was 13 years old, I got my social security card and had to go to work over the summer at a hearing-aid and transistor parts factory. The check was used to help my family make ends meet. By then my mother had two more children in addition to my brother Jerry, who was born three years after I was.

JW: Why did your mother have two more children so many years later?
Md'A: She later confessed to me that she had had my brother Stanley and my sister Elaine later in her life to keep my father from straying. So I had to help take care of them, since my mother was in her forties and had had nervous breakdowns with both births. The newborns were exhausting and stressful for her.

JW: You must have been gratified to get out of the house when it was time for college.
Md’A: It was liberating. When I was 17 years old, I won a scholarship to the Boston Museum School, which was at the time considered the second best fine arts college in the country after the Chicago Art Institute. By then, I was living a pretty bohemian life, which angered my mother to no end, since she was rather traditional. [Pictured: Debut of Spring, 1996, watercolor, by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

Tomorrow, Meredith starts college, falls deeply in love, is jilted and fights bitterly with her mother. The singer also reflects on the influence of Horace Silver's records in the 1950s, and singing with Maynard Ferguson's big band in Boston.

JazzWax tracks: Meredith has recorded 15 albums. Her first was Lost in His Arms (1978). She accompanied herself on piano on some tracks and was joined on others by Ray Santisi (piano), Norman Coles (guitar), Chris Rathbun (bass) and an unknown drummer. The album is available as a download at iTunes and Amazon. It's available on CD for a small fortune here. 

Art exhibit and performance: If you're in Miami next Thursday (September 24th), get over to the gallery at radio station WDNA (88.9 FM) to see the opening of Meredith's latest exhibit of 35 watercolors and oil paintings. You'll also get to hear a rare performance by Meredith accompanied by pianist Patti Wicks. For more information and ticket prices, go here.

JazzWax clip: Here, Meredith turns Alec Wilder's Rain, Rain (Don't Go 'Way) from her 1981 release, Another Time, into a gorgeous work of art. The tasteful piano? That's Meredith accompanying herself...

Sunday Wax Bits

Waxing & musings. Thirteen years have passed since the Kennedy Center named a working jazz musician (Benny Carter) as one of its esteemed annual honorees. This past week the Kennedy Center turned again to the jazz world by announcing that Dave Brubeck would be saluted at its 2009 gala on December 6th (which coincidentally is Dave's 89th birthday!).

According to the Kennedy Center press release, "Dave Brubeck helped ease jazz into the mainstream, married spontaneity with classical rigor, made unlikely time signatures irresistible, and he made very serious music swing."

Hats off to the Kennedy Center for recognizing a master who has devoted his life to jazz and for deciding to make jazz and jazz history significant again. What's more, jazz will wind up in American living rooms when the gala is aired on CBS during the holidays. We only hope that the Kennedy Center's newfound recognition of jazz at the honoree level is the start of an enduring trend by the institution and Washington, D.C., in general. Many of today's living jazz legends are simply too humble and proud to make a fuss about being ignored or excluded.

Eddie Locke (1930-2009), an educator and session drummer favored by Coleman Hawkins, Duke Ellington, Roy Eldridge and other jazz legends during their revival years in the 1960s and 1970s, died last week in Ramsey, N.J. He was 79.

Locke was a superb old-school timekeeper who understood exactly what jazz headliners needed—a rock steady beat and a sharp cymbal. As a result, Locke was repeatedly selected by Hawkins for recordings in the 1960s.

Two of my favorite Hawkins-Locke dates can be found on one CD download, Coleman Hawkins: On Broadway. The download includes Good Old Broadway and Coleman Hawkins Plays Make Someone Happy, both recorded in 1962. Or dig Hawk and Locke together on Make Someone Happy, which sounds spectacular as an iTunes download.

Four Brothers. While researching my Four Brothers: Together Again! post last week, I came across this doozy...

Sonny Rollins. Last week Bret Primack celebrated Sonny Rollins' 79th birthday by posting video he taped while interviewing Sonny recently on a wide range of topics. Revealing stuff...

Woody Herman. Here's further evidence that all Woody Herman orchestras were good. This clip is from 1964. Dig Woody step in and out of the section to maximize the reed effect.

CD Discovery of the Week: Jazz has deep holy-roller roots. Musicians who have channeled the church include pianists Horace Silver, Bobby Timmons and Billy Taylor. Each adapted gospel slightly differently but all did so for rousing effect. But there's also a tender side to gospel, which pianist Mary Lou Williams embraced on Black Christ of the Andes. Now Cyrus Chestnut on Spirit, his new solo piano CD, expounds on the beatific shadings of gospel music.

Chestnut, 46, knows from what he plays. His father was a church organist and his mother led the church choir. At age six, Chestnut began playing piano at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Baltimore, his family's place of worship. What's different about Chestnut's approach to gospel music is that he hears the pastoral gentleness of gospel music and the nurturing quality of the music.

Spirit is one pretty album, and you get to hear a raw openness and feeling in Chestnut's playing. As you listen, you can't help but feel as though you've been invited over to dinner at the Chestnut home. It's that intimate. There are a handful of traditional songs on the album as well as an original and a few standards, like Horace Silver's Peace, Duke Ellington's Come Sunday and Paul Simon's Bridge Over Troubled Water.

No matter your faith, this album will melt whatever turmoil you faced during the week and make you realize how graceful gospel music can be in Chestnut's hands.

Cyrus Chestnut's Spirit is available as a download at iTunes and Amazon and is available on CD here and at other online retailers.

Oddball Album Cover of the Week: Once again, never underestimate the value of those three-martini lunches creative directors favored in the 1950s. This puppy was designed for EmArcy Records in 1956. The band playing on Out on a Limb included some of the best West Coast players of the period—once they managed to pluck their axes from the branches.

Followup: Two Sundays ago, I featured Jimmy Scott's Falling in Love Is Wonderful. In my post, I noted "Jimmy looked as though he just finished strangling the model." Reader Andrew Cartmel e-mailed me the following:

"I love your Oddball Album of the Week feature each Sunday. Most recently it sent me hurrying away to dig out Little Jimmy Scott's Falling In Love is Wonderful. I thought I'd let you know that the man in the photo isn't actually Scott. The informative Rhino CD notes quotes Jimmy: 'It hurt a little, but I understood that the album might sell more with a big, handsome guy on the cover rather than me. Besides, all that counted was the music.' As I'm sure you know, Scott himself suffers from Kallmann syndrome, a form of dwarfism."

Jimmy Heath: Endurance

Speaking of tenor saxophone legends who are still going  strong, Jimmy Heath has just released Endurance, a CD co-led with his younger brother, drummer Albert "Tootie" Heath. Endurance features six Heath originals, a composition by pianist Jeb Patton and the standard Autumn in New York.  Like James Moody, Heath is a workhorse who continues to tour relentlessly and turn out dynamic, meaningful recordings. From start to finish, this new album is warm, engaging and loaded with sharp ideas by both Heath brothers.

Jimmy Heath, 82, began his career on the alto saxophone in 1948 when he and his older brother, bassist Percy, joined Howard McGhee's sextet. The following year he was in Dizzy Gillespie's orchestra sitting next to John Coltrane, who also happened to be playing alto saxophone at the time. In the early 1950s Heath switched to tenor and in 1953 recorded for Blue Note with the Miles Davis All Stars. Heath stayed with the tenor sax and began recording with a range of early hard bop groups.

But Heath's rise would be cut short when he was sent to prison in 1955 for drug possession. At the Lewisburg Penitentiary in Pennsylvania, Heath continued to play and lead prison bands. Upon release in 1959, Heath replaced John Coltrane for two months in the Miles Davis' Quintet. In the early 1960s, Heath recorded on several hard bop sessions, including Freddie Hubbard's Hub Cap (1961), Elmo Hope's Homecoming (1961) and a series of sessions with Nat Adderley and Milt Jackson. In 1965, Heath began co-leading recordings with trumpeter Art Farmer.

In the early 1970s, Heath recorded with a wide range of artists and in bands of varying sizes. Among his most notable dates from this period include Charles Earland's Black Drops (1970), with a roaring solo on Lazy Bird. He also played on Ray Charles' Jazz Number II (1971) and My Kind of Jazz III (1975), and released a leadership album, Picture of Heath (1975).

In 1978, he and his brothers Percy and Albert formed the Heath Brothers, and the trio recorded together until 1998. Since then, Jimmy has recorded as a sideman on big band dates and from time to time as a leader.

On Endurance, Jimmy Heath exhibits enormous soul and swing. When I first put the album on, I found I couldn't take it off easily. There's so much good taste here—and absolutely no padding. Every note, melodic twist and solo matters. And the CD's sonic production is sterling. The music rushes up to greet you and won't let go. Joining Jimmy and Albert are pianist Jeb Patton and bassist David Wong.

Ordinarily I'd click off songs that were particularly moving, but everything on this CD is performed at a consistently high level, with tracks fitting together seamlessly. Tunes range in mood and rhythm from the soft minor-major bossa nova Changes to the march-time Wall to Wall. Jimmy dedicated Two Tees to brother Albert "Tootie" Heath, but there are shades of Elmo Hope's Roll On here. There's also a lovely mid-tempo Autumn in New York that's just right—not too sentimental or insensitive. Jimmy switches to soprano sax on the ballad From a Lonely Bass, which includes fine arco bowing by Wong.

This is cooking music from fraternal masters, both of whom have plenty more to say.

JazzWax tracks: Endurance (Jazz Legacy Productions) can be found as a download at iTunes (under "Heath Brothers") or at Amazon. Or it's available on CD here and other online retailers.

JazzWax clip: Here's a clip of Tadd from That's Right!, a fabulous little known Riverside album from 1960 led by Nat Adderley. Jimmy has a crisp solo 2:00 into the clip...

James Moody: 4A

When his tenor saxophone hangs on his chest, James Moody is an entertainer. Years spent working with the best jazz cut-ups has taught him the value of lightening up an audience. So when Moody's on stage between songs, he's revving up his charm and drawing everyone in. But when it's time to work, a transformation takes place in his face. The jovial side disappears and is replaced by a very serious expression that can only be likened to a surgeon starting a procedure.

On Moody: 4A, his latest CD and 258th recording session, Moody, 84, is all surgeon and demonstrates why he's still doing what he does best. Only a handful of ironman tenor originators are still touring, including Moody, Sonny Rollins, Benny Golson, Jimmy Heath and Frank Wess. Through genetics, a spiritual calm, or maybe the embrace of humor, all of these greats remain highly productive artists some 60 years after they began. That's quite a feat when you think how physically tough touring and playing is, not to mention the constant demand for fresh ideas. Coasting isn't do-able at this level.

What makes Moody: 4A so special are the song choices and tempos. First, the song choices: Except for Voyage, a Kenny Barron [pictured] original from some years back, all the tunes are well-known standards that Moody has recorded before. The list is pure jazz songbook—Secret Love, 'Round Midnight, Without a Song, Stella by Starlight, East of the Sun, Stablemates and Bye Bye Blackbird. Yet Moody breathes fresh life into them all with his warm, woody tone and flawless phrasing.

As for the tempos, nearly all are taken at a walking pace, which to be honest was a stroke of production genius. This album is a smoke-ring session, and you really get to feel Moody's low notes and hear the high ones ring. Even Without a Song and Stablemates are taken at an easy canter and seem to be moving in slow motion, as if running under water.

The ottoman pace here has nothing to do with age. Moody could have stripped the paint off your walls with a bullwhip tempo if he had wanted to. But either Moody or someone at IPO Records wisely suggested keeping the lid on. The result is a different Moody recording. No tricks. No cute stuff. No movie music. No  clowning. Just serious, seamless ideas and a bared soul. This is Moody singing through his horn, and each song hits you as if you're hearing them for the first time. It's amazing what happens when tempos are reigned in and a song's beauty speaks for itself.

The most remarkable track on this CD is East of the Sun. It features only Moody and pianist Kenny Barron, who is a  legend in his own right. Taken at a pace close to Parker's Mood, Moody digs in deep here, channeling Sarah Vaughan's 1950 version for Columbia. What surfaces is one of the most beautiful instrumental versions I've heard in some time. You get to hear how well-rounded Moody's tone has become and how tasteful Barron continues to be. They're so good, in fact, that an entire album of Moody and Barron duos would be most welcome.

So what's up with the album title? No, it's not an apartment number. It refers to the four-member group—Moody, Barron, bassist Todd Coolman and drummer Lewis Nash. The letter in the title leaves plenty of room in the alphabet for 25 more recordings. From what I hear, Moody: 4B is already in the works.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find Moody: 4A (IPO Records) as a download at iTunes and Amazon. Or on CD here. Liner notes are by Ira Gitler, who also wrote the notes to Dizzy Gillespie: Showtime at the Spotlite (June 1946), a double CD set that also just happened to be Moody's first recording.

JazzWax clip: For more on Moody, dig this clip featuring Moody's wit and wisdom backed by snippets of his famed recordings...

Four Brothers: Together Again!

At 3 p.m. on February 11, 1957, four saxophonists who had  played in Woody's Herman's late-1940s bands entered Webster Hall in New York City to record an album for RCA's Vik label. The musicians were Al Cohn, Zoot Sims, Herbie Steward and Serge Chaloff. Except for a two-hour dinner break, the session lasted 10 hours, wrapping at 1 a.m. The result was The Four Brothers: Together Again!, a superb album that shows off the enormous reed work of four seasoned swingers.

For those who are scratching their heads about this Four Brothers business, let me explain. In late 1947, tenor saxophonist Jimmy Giuffre [pictured] wrote an arrangement for Woody Herman called Four Brothers to showcase the band's saxophone section. Most tenor saxophonists at this point were under the spell of Lester Young's smooth approach on the instrument, and Giuffre's arrangement was designed to spotlight the section's Lester Young chops—both collectively and individually through solos. Hence the term, "Four Brothers." The saxophonists sounded as one together but went their merry way when playing alone.  [Photo of Jimmy Giuffre by Herb Snitzer]

After Four Brothers was recorded by Herman in December 1947, the single was a jazz hit and an early example of how saxes could be harmonized like the Pied Pipers, Modernaires [pictured] or any other big band vocal group of the period. But Four Brothers was more than just another arrangement: The emphasis on blended harmonies and Young-like saxes playing together would become the basis for West Coast jazz just a few years later.

Actually, the history of this four-sax concept had its start shortly before Woody Herman's band. In early 1947, tenor saxophonists Steward, Sims, Giuffre and Stan Getz were trying out the format while playing for dancers at Pontrelli's, a ballroom in Los Angeles. The group featured trumpeter Tommy De Carlo, the band's leader, the four tenor saxophonists, and a three-man rhythm section. For three months, the octet worked the club with arrangements by Gene Roland and Giuffre.

In September 1947, Woody Herman organized a new band. He had broken up his previous one earlier in the year and by the fall was ready to re-group. Herman hired Sims, Steward, Getz and Serge Chaloff on baritone. Giuffre was still arranging, but with a new family, he was working at J.C. Penney in Los Angeles to make ends meet. Herman added Sam Marowitz on lead alto.

Tenor saxophonist and arranger Al Cohn joined Herman's sax section in January 1948, replacing Steward. Giuffre didn't join the band until spring of 1949, replacing Sims. Interestingly, not until Herman formed his next band, in 1950—the so-called Third Herd—did the four-saxophone sound made famous by Giuffre's Four Brothers become dominant in the orchestra.

For the Together Again! recording in 1957, Sims and Cohn were in New York, Steward was flown in from the West Coast and Chaloff, who was in a wheel chair following a spinal operation, took a plane from Boston. Joining the saxophonists were Elliot Lawrence on piano (he also conducted), Burgher "Buddy" Jones on bass and Don Lamond on drums.

Ten tracks were recorded—Four Brothers, Ten Years Later,  The Pretty One, Aged in Wood, Here We Go Again, Four and One Moore, So Blue, the Swinging Door, Four in Hand and A Quick One. Arrangements were by Cohn, Lawrence and Manny Albam. Collectively, the group swings on every track. Individually, you hear the different colorations of the artists as each digs in with Young-like lines. The sound lost nothing over the years, and with the new late-1950s recording technology, the effect of four saxes blowing harmony had even more impact than the earlier 78-rpm singles.

Interestingly, Tom Lord's Jazz Discography notes that baritone saxophonist Charlie O'Kane was used in the section on the last five tracks. The album doesn't acknowledge this personnel swap, probably because O'Kane's inclusion in the personnel would have negated the album's concept of a Herman reed-section reunion. I'm guessing that the 10-hour session was a bit much for the ailing Chaloff, who may have been triggering re-takes toward dinner. O'Kane was likely brought in to handle the section-work with Chaloff just delivering the solos. Elliot Lawrence was likely the one who reached out to O'Kane, who was playing in his band at the time.

Together Again! would be Chaloff's last session, and he probably knew it, which is why he made the trip. Chaloff died five months later in July 1957 of spinal cancer.

JazzWax tracks: Four Brothers: Together Again! can be found on CD in several different versions. There's an out-of-print Japanese import selling for about $150 here. Or you can buy a copy of the CD released in the mid-1990s for about $15 here. Or there's an import box from Europe (of unknown audio quality) that offers four Zoot Sims albums for $15 here.

Jimmy Giuffre, the composer and arranger of Four Brothers, did not play tenor saxophone on the hit record by Woody Herman in December 1947. But he did record two versions shortly afterward. One was in January 1948 with bassist Harry Babasin and His Potential Philharmonics. The other, in July 1948, was with Buddy Rich.

In many ways, the Rich version (called Four Rich Brothers), is more explosive than the famed Herman version. You'll find it here as a 99-cent download. You be the judge. The sax lineup? Hal McKusick  (alto sax), Giuffre, Ben Lary and Warne Marsh (tenor saxes) and Harvey Lavine (baritone sax).

JazzWax clip: If you're unfamiliar with Jimmy Giuffre's Four Brothers, here's a clip of the Herman band in 1985 playing it...

Dave Pell on Don Fagerquist

If you're unfamiliar with trumpeter Don Fagerquist [pictured], that's about to change. The now nearly forgotten West Coast trumpeter had one of the richest tones in the business in the 1950s and 1960s, and he made everything he played sound melodic and effortless. Fagerquist's solos were like tennis balls rolling out of a can onto a clay court. There was a soft, rich bounce to his ideas, and Fagerquist had enormous taste, playing just what the ear wanted to hear—no more or less.

For a West Coast comparison, where Chet Baker's tone could echo with haunting rumination and Conte Candoli's had a bop tinge, Fagerquist was a mood player. His triplets were like dance steps, and he could roll up or down chords with perfect precision. Fagerquist learned breath control in the big bands of Gene Krupa, Artie Shaw, Woody Herman and Les Brown [pictured] during the first 13 years of his career. By the mid-1950s, Fagerquist could add taut, piercing color to band trumpet sections and produce the most seductive, sterling solos. In 1956, Fagerquist left Les Brown to freelance on other artists' albums, finding time to record only two LPs as a leader.

What isn't as well known about Fagerquist is the scope of his studio work. He played on 85 Hollywood film soundtracks and had solos on 210 albums, including three by Sinatra (Ring-A-Ding-Ding, Sinatra & Swingin’ Brass and Softly As I Leave You). Between 1956 and 1974, the year Fagerquist died at age 47, he was one of the most in-demand Los Angeles studio trumpeters, often hired just for adding a solo.

One musician who knew Don well was tenor saxophonist Dave Pell [pictured], whose octet was one of the most successful small groups on the West Coast starting in the early 1950s. Fagerquist played in Dave Pell's group and recorded on more than 15 of Dave's albums. I asked Dave to reflect on the trumpeter, who was known to friends as "Dugan":

JazzWax: Where did Fagerquist get his start?
Dave Pell: Don played with strange bands early on, like Mal Hallett’s band in 1943. Mal was a jazz violinist who could swing, but audiences never caught on to his scene. Don [pictured at age 11] joined Mal’s band when he was just 16 years old. He did a radio show with Hallett in 1944 and then joined Gene Krupa’s band later that year. That’s when he started getting a whole bunch of solos. But he was a vanilla player then. He had chops, but he didn’t have the drive or the sound that Roy Eldridge had in Gene's band. Roy was a solid jazz player.

JW: Fagerquist moved around between several major bands in the late 1940s and early 1950s, didn't he?
DP: Yes. After Gene [Krupa], Don was with Artie Shaw’s band in 1949 and 1950—with that bebop band Artie had. He also was in Artie’s Gramercy Five with Jimmy Raney in 1950. Then he was back with Gene and after with Woody in ’51 and ’52.

JW: When did Fagerquist join you in Les Brown’s band?
DP: Don came on Les Brown’s band in ’52. By then he had moved out to the West Coast with his family. He was amazing from the start. He had gotten an incredible education in all those other bands. But I’m not sure in which band he became Don Fagerquist, the great trumpet soloist.

JW: Did your Les Brown bandmates like his playing?
DP: Oh, yes. We called him Dugan. Everyone who liked him called him that. I’m not sure why. When Don got into Les’ band, he was fluent in bebop and his solos were much more melodic. He wasn’t drinking then. Les’ band was more of an all-American band. It wasn’t as hip as Woody Herman’s or Stan Kenton’s bands. But we had enough of a feel that Donny fit in perfectly.

JW: What knocked you out about Fagerquist on the band?
DP: He had developed some kind of super listening  capacity. He never let a chord in a chart go by without playing the right notes around it. A lot of us would skate by that by playing simpler. Not Don. He’d play every single chord change in the tune—running melodies on improvisations. He always turned a solo into a melodic thing.

JW: What do you mean by a "melodic thing?"
DP: It’s one thing to improvise on chord changes. It’s another to create complete melodies on the spot during solos. These are like mini songs, and it's a much more difficult thing to do. Donny would go so far as to talk with the band's bassist, telling him to play this chord change and that change. Donny listened to the bass while he played.

JW: What made Fagerquist special?
DP: He played so beautifully and cleanly. Your ear wanted to hear more when he played. With Donny, it was like having a genius on the band. He was a class act. When the arrangers realized what they had in Don, he had solos on every tune. His sound was beautiful. He had chops to do anything he thought of. Most people don’t realize that Don was comedic. He always played something cute and funny. And he was always thinking ahead. He was so fast that he would mock his own initial solo in his second solo. It was incredible. The average listener might not hear what Donny was doing there, but a musician would.

JW: How can you explain his sound?
DP: First of all Don rarely missed anything. Some go for a high F and never get there. Donny could get there and do almost anything that came into his mind. He had a little fatter sound than most trumpeters, and what he played was always hipper. His tone was so full it almost sounded like he was playing flugelhorn. There was roundness there, and no one else had that sound.

JW: What was he like as a person?
DP: He was a character. In person, he was clever and funny, just like his music. But it was his playing that held your attention. The guys would talk about Don's playing all the time. When Don would start a solo, he knew exactly where he was going to end. He'd work it out in his head in advance. Then he’d play right up to that ending he had in mind and always wrap his solo on the note he chose. That’s why his solos always sounded planned out. Les would drive him crazy though. Don's first solo on a song would be so pretty that Les would want the same solo, note for note, night after night. Don would complain, saying, “But Les, it’s boring if I do that.” Les would reply, “Hey Don, you're the one who came up with the solo. That’s what I expect to hear. That's what the people who come to hear us expect to hear.”

JW: Did Don listen to Les?
DP: Not always. I remember on Our Love Is Here to Stay, Don had the solo. Every night the guys in the band would be on the floor as Don would take the solo differently each time. Most soloists don’t get that kind of collective reaction from the players in the band. You’d be sitting there after Don finished saying to yourself, “My god, did I just hear what I just heard"

JW: In 1953, you started your famed octet, which featured Fagerquist.
DP: Yes, I started that with guys from Les Brown's band, while we were all still in the band. In the octet, I always made sure to follow Don on a solo, so he'd give me something to build on [laughs]. He’d set me up with a figure on the ending of a solo, which was always sensational. [Pictured: Fagerquist in Mal Hallett's band in 1943]

JW: Was Fagerquist well liked in the octet?
DP: Yes. He was very easy-going. I had guys like Marty Paich, Shorty Rogers, Johnny Mandel and Bill Holman writing for my group. And guys like Claude Williamson, Ray Sims and Bob Gordon playing in there. Yet Donnie would steal the album again and again [laughs]. As a musician, you’d want to hear what he would do on every track. We did a thing featuring him in 1955, called Flying Down to Rio. Donny is fantastic on there.

JW: Fagerquist also did plenty of studio work, yes?
DP: After he left Les Brown in 1956 with other guys from the band to join my octet full time, Donny became the hit of the L.A. studios. He did every studio call for a jazz player. He did Sinatra dates after “Sweets” [Edison] stopped making those. 

JW: Fagerquist began to drink heavily, though, didn't he?
DP: Yes. Don’s downfall was that he was a bad boy. He wasn’t a Boy Scout like me. He'd always drink on the stand. He’d have a bottle of Coke down there by his leg, but the cola would get lighter and lighter as the session or gig wore on. Eventually in the 1960s his drinking got real bad. By the end of playing dates he was so drunk you’d hope he’d show up for the next one. By the early 1970s, his body was destroyed. No one would hire him.

JW: Do you remember your last gig with him?
DP: In 1973 I got to direct the music for a TV show. It was  an hour and a half talk show hosted by Tom Kennedy [pictured], who was a popular game-show host. The gig lasted until 1974. I had Jimmy Rowles on piano, Ray Brown on bass and Frankie Capp on drums. I wanted Donny on there, to give him some work.

JW: Were you concerned about his alcoholism?
DP: To protect against him drifting off to drink, I made sure his wife brought him to the studio each day and picked him up after so he wouldn’t mess up. We’d tape two to three shows a day. If we ran short on any one of them, I'd just point to Don and let him play. He played beautifully, even then. He was trying so hard to quit the booze. What a shame.

JW: What did Les Brown think of Fagerquist?
DP: For whatever reason, Les didn’t like Don. One time Les came over to me when I was still in the band and said, “You guys make such a fuss over Fagerquist. I don’t see it at all. He sounds ordinary.” When I left the band in 1956 and took many of the best musicians with me for my octet, including Don, Les wasn’t happy about that.

JW: What did he do?
DP: He didn’t talk to me for 10 years after I left [laughs]. My octet was doing great featuring Don. Ten years later I went to  see the Les Brown Band play. Afterward, Les came over to me and said, “Pell, I’ve been meaning to talk to you. I’ve been working on the ‘53 Palladium Concert tapes for release. I want you to know I’ve been listening to Fagerquist for five hours a day for weeks. You know, I want to take back whatever I said about Donny. He really is a player. He’s the best.” No one was around when Les told me that. It was just him and me. For Les to admit that was huge.

JazzWax tracks: Don Fagerquist can be heard on the albums of all the big bands mentioned above. But his brilliance is best heard in small-group settings.

Fagerquist's two leadership albums were The Don Fagerquist Nonette (1955) and the Don Fagerquist Octet: Eight by Eight (1957). Part of the first session and all of the second can be found on two splendid CDs: Don Fagerquist: Portrait of a Great Jazz Artist (Fresh Sound) here and Don Fagerquist Octet (VSOP) here. The first CD mentioned is an absolute must and features a mix of Fagerquist recordings with different artists, including Bill Holman and Russ Garcia. Dig the reed writing on The Way You Look Tonight. Or Fagerquist's solo on Bobby Troup's You're Looking at Me (which opens my interview clip by Bret Primack at the top of this blog).

Fagerquist with the Dave Pell Octet can be heard loud and  clear on several excellent CDs, including The Dave Pell Octet: Jazz for Dancing and Listening (Fresh Sound), a double CD here, and Dave Pell Octet Plays Irving Berlin, Plays Burke and Van Heusen, and Plays Rodgers and Hart (all Fresh Sound). Two of the three are available at Amazon as downloads here and here.

More reading: There's a fine interview of Evelyn Bowler, Fagerquist's sister, by Chet Williamson here. And Jeff Helgesen hosts a tribute site here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Georgie Auld's group in September 1959. At 5:30 into the clip, Fagerquist takes a nice muted trumpet solo...