Sunday Wax Bits

Waxing & musings. Not all jazz is good. A somewhat obvious observation, I know, but an often-overlooked one judging by the debate still raging over whether or not jazz is dying. Too often, we assume that if someone plays or sings jazz, everyone has some moral obligation to buy the person's CD or hear him or her perform. I disagree. What a musician plays matters. And from where I sit, too many new jazz CDs these days are rather dull and uninspiring. There's a crisis brewing in jazz today, but it's not over jazz's aging demographic or dimming popularity. It's a steady and worrisome decline in taste. [Pictured: Counting Sheep by Karen Aune]

To be sure, more jazz musicians today are fabulously schooled and technically spectacular. But a vast majority choose bad or obvious songs, are content to sound like everyone else, or play solos that lack engaging ideas. I don't make this observation to be snobby. I also don't want to sound like grandpa rapping his cane against a table. I just wish more of what I heard each week seduced me and made me feel excited. What's often missing, I find, isn't ability. It's taste and thoughtful choices.

How can jazz musicians acquire good taste? Well, you can't buy good taste, and you can't learn it in school. You can't even pick it up by practicing for hours. Taste comes by prodigiously studying those who already have it and adapting what you hear to your own artistic expression. In jazz, taste exists mostly in the recordings of the 1940s and 1950s and, to some extent, in the 1960s and beyond. Musicians and record producers back then cared intently about how the music sounded and worked hard to catch ears and remain relevant. They also revered the music and musicians who came before them and studied what they had recorded and played.

Today's jazz musicians can learn all they need to about taste by listening and absorbing the great recordings of the past. Then they need to think about why earlier musicians made the choices they did, and adapt what they hear to their own approach and vision. As Artie Shaw once told a clarinet player complaining about his own shortcomings: "Did you become familiar with the work of the greatest musicians in the world; did you do every single thing they did for 10 years—and then another 10 years after that? When you do all that, come back and see me. Then we can talk about talent."

The past isn't old. It actually contains the heart and soul of jazz's future.

Herman Leonard. Following my interview with photographer Herman Leonard and the posting of his famed April 1948 photo of Ella Fitzgerald, many readers speculated on who was pictured to the right of Fitzgerald. Last week, Herman sent along an e-mail to clear up the confusion. From left to right: clarinetist Stan Hasselgard (partially visible), Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and music publisher Jack Robbins (at Ellington's table).

Memories of You. Following my post on Sonny Dunham and Memories of You last week, photographer and producer Hank O'Neal sent along the following recollection:

"The most fun I ever had with Memories of You was in 1968 at New York's Village Gate. I went there with Don Ewell, who was playing duets with Willie 'the Lion' Smith. After a rousing set, Willie announced there was a surprise guest as an intermission pianist. It was Eubie Blake [pictured]. No one even looked up when he was announced. Eubie shuffled to the piano and played something. I don't remember what it was. Polite applause. Then Eubie said he was going to play something he had written in 1898. It was The Charleston Rag. This got the audience's attention. Then he played 'something a U.S. president used as his theme song.' It was I'm Just Wild About Harry. Big time cheers. Then he played the concert version of Memories of You, and the place went nuts. A nice night."

Leon Ware. After my interview with soul composer, singer and producer Leon Ware, reader Dave James alerted me to the following clip of Marvin Gaye rehearsing I Want You...

After I brought the clip to the attention of Carol Ware, Leon's wife, she sent along the following comment:

"Leon [pictured] returned to L.A. last evening. I viewed the video you attached and was blown away. I can't wait for Leon to see it. When Marvin and Leon were recording the I Want You album, Leon entered the studio one day and heard Marvin singing. But Leon couldn't see him there. So he asked Art Stewart, the engineer, where Marvin was 'hiding.' Art pointed to the couch in front of the console, which you couldn't see unless you walked up to it. Well, lo and behold, there was Marvin lying on the couch doing his vocal. Leon said he sounded like he was standing straight up. Absolutely amazing!"

Sammy Price. Disc jockey and historian Symphony Sid Gribetz will be hosting a five-hour program today on pianist Sammy Price. Price began his career as an entertainer on the black vaudeville circuit, and then became a fixture in the Southwestern swing and blues jazz scene. Time: 2 to 7 p.m. (EDT). Go here to listen on WKCR-FM in New York.

CD discoveries of the week. The last live recording of the Bud Shank Quartet was captured at Los Angeles' Jazz Bakery back in January of this year. The alto saxophonist was already ailing and would die in April. What you hear on Bud Shank Quartet: Fascinating Rhythms is a master alto saxophonist comfortable in his own skin and roaring in the face of what lay in the months ahead.

Bud's sound, from the early 1950s on, was edgy and aggressive, like someone telling you a story while poking you in the chest with an index finger. What made all of Bud's recordings exciting is he had nothing to prove, having established himself early on as a Tyrannosaurus Rex player, sideman and leading studio musician. With Bud, you were always listening to a liberated artist who played as he pleased.

What's interesting about this newly released recording is that each track has its own joyous or pained personality. Chicane is a soaring original bossa nova. Over the Rainbow wails hard. Night and Day cuts loose. Perhaps the album's high point is Lover Man, which conjures up ghosts of Charlie Parker's West Coast recording in 1945 just prior to his nervous breakdown. Bud's lines here are harrowing and summarize a powerful career.

Joining Bud on this date were three sterling sidemen: Bill Mays on piano, Bob Magnusson on bass and Joe LaBarbera on drums. You'll find Fascinating Rhythms (Jazzed Media) at iTunes or here.

Another late great artist whose work is out on a new CD is pianist Vince Guaraldi. Perhaps best known for his Jazz Impressions of Black Orpheus (1962) and mid-1960s incidental jazz piano pieces for the Charlie Brown TV specials, Guaraldi's recording career spanned from 1951 to 1974. The San Francisco pianist died of a heart attack at age 47 in 1976.

The new double-CD, The Definitive Vince Guaraldi, includes material you probably know well as well as tracks you may have missed or overlooked, such as Mr. Lucky, The Girl From Ipanema and Days of Wine and Roses. There's also a previously unreleased Blues for Peanuts, which is a terrific jazz piece from 1964. What makes this collection special is that it's all together, so you hear the origins and evolution of so much playfulness.

The Definitive Vince Guaraldi (Concord) can be found at iTunes and Amazon.

What do both albums have in common? Fabulous liner notes by the inimitable Doug Ramsey.

Oddball album cover of the week. Les Baxter was in the sax section of Freddie Slack's band during the recording of Cow Cow Boogie in 1942. He also was the bass voice in Mel Torme's Mel-Tones in the mid-1940s, writing many of the vocal group's arrangements. But in the 1950s, Baxter pioneered a new genre: exotic lounge. As out there as Baxter was, Space Escapade (1958) takes the cake. On this cover, it appears Baxter not only has discovered a planet with radioactive females, the partying playmates also have corkscrews conveniently attached to their heads. Baxter clearly has it good here, but I'm not sure how he and his co-pilot managed to get the fizzy cocktails they're hoisting through their bubble helmets.

Comments

[Michael Steinman]

Dear Marc,

Oh, so right . . . and the deluge of "jazz" CDs is full of earnest but sometimes shallow "composing," too. I would add to your suggestion (studying the beautiful sessions of the Forties and Fifties) by adding the decades on either side. Certainly a young singer, for instance, could learn a great deal by listening to Ida Cox, to Lips Page, to Lee Wiley -- and to the great storytellers of jazz's whole panorama on their instruments. I get equally disillusioned and then hear one of my heroes play (Dan Barrett) or discover a new young titan-in-the-making, the altoist Luigi Grasso, who's studied with Barry Harris: he's 23. He gives me hope!

Keep on, my man --

[Ian Bradley]

Thank you Marc for expressing perfectly how I feel about 'the past'. I often feel a bit bullied and irrelevant in my jazz tastes, since 'the cutting edge' or 'the next new thing' is where real jazz is really supposed to be. The publicity puffs and magazines would have you believe that 'everybody is Bill Evans'. When jazz was the lingua franca of popular music, when it was ubiquitous, there weren't that many 'greats'. How can there be then , nowadays, in our largely jazzless age? It doesn't jusitfy the hyperbole of the press releases and the ever swelling tide of new releases. Thank you for reminding us of perspective - and that honouring the past is a vital part of shaping the future.

[Ed Leimbacher]

I think it was poet and doctor William Carlos Williams who told us to "Make it new!" But too much of modern Jazz is just old wine in new bottles instead. It's a perfect irony, then, that you have today reviewed still largely unheralded great Bud Shank, who just got tougher and better with age--a saxman who played his best no matter what the circumstances, including his own looming death.

[Doug Zielke]

Thank you, Marc, for mentioning the last recording of Bud Shank. I'm sure his legion of fans know of his website (http://www.budshankalto.com/), and it's well worth a visit if you're not familiar. Be sure to read his explanation of the dishonesty he suffered at the hands of the Port Townsend festival heavyweights.

[Bill Kirchner]

Good points! A few of my own observations:

There are way more jazz albums being recorded now than ever before. Therefore, by sheer law of averages, there are bound to be more mediocre-or-worse recordings than ever before.

But there's more to it. More jazz musicians are producing their own recordings than ever before, and many simply don't have the talent or experience for it. Milt Gabler, Norman Granz, George Avakian, Alfred Lion, Orrin Keepnews, et al. had a special gift that is often overlooked--for album concepts, tune selection, pacing, and simply getting the best out of the performers.

And to top things off, the length of the CD (now up to 79 minutes) works against producing a uniformly interesting album. The length of an LP--35-45 minutes--was ideal. The extra playing time of a CD means that many of them go on past their bedtimes. It also means that in order to pay for the additional mechanical licenses of the songs and other increased production costs, the CDs have to be more expensive.

So consumers have rebelled by embracing downloading (both legal and illegal), which means that listeners no longer have to buy tracks that they're not interested in. This, of course, is especially true of young pop listeners.