What defines a female jazz vocalist today? Is it someone
whose albums feature at least three American Songbook standards? Must the singer be backed by well-known jazz musicians? What about her sound? Does she have to be bluesy? Or is this checklist outdated? There's probably no concrete answer to these questions. I do know that I'm tired of hearing the same songs over and over again, no matter how good the singer's voice. For me, the singer known simply as Brettina is among those artists who are trying to break the old, tired mold.
Brettina Robinson's debut CD, Brettina, isn't a traditional jazz vocal album. It's better. On the album,
Brettina works through
mostly originals, each melody and arrangement more captivating than
the last. Born in Nassau, the Bahamas, Brettina's warm-weather roots are evident throughout—in the stories she tells and in the lilting surfy
beats on many of the tracks. Best of all, Brettina is genuine and completely inside the music.
Catch the The Bug's tidal sweep or the jazz-soul intensity of Chai. Or the shimmy-funk 1980s feel of Kirkwood Coakley's My Time
to Shine and the lower-register ballad Pardon the Storm. Brettina takes on Harry Belafonte's Island In the Sun but rather than mime the calypso singer's version, she delivers the song with a rock-a-by feel. And dig One, my favorite. It builds and smolders, topping off with a terrific piano solo by Tracy Carter.
To me, this is a first-rate jazz album of emotional beauty that is personal and endearing. And it grows on you. To Brettina's credit, she's patient with the material, never over-singing or trying to be something she's not. I suspect that what we hear is pretty much who she is.
To be sure, this CD will be a little different than the jazz vocalist albums you're accustomed to hearing. But the same passion and sincerity we expect in traditional jazz vocalists are here. And like any good jazz vocalist, Brettina constantly pulls you toward the lyrics and makes the listen a one-on-one experience. Also fabulous are the album's arrangements, which consistently engage you and perfectly support the artist.
JazzWax tracks: You can sample Brettina Robinson's Brettina at
iTunes or here. A CD version is available through her website here or at Amazon here. Hats off to Tracy Carter, who produced this album and plays exceptional piano throughout. Carter also had a hand in the writing several songs.
Interviewing Nat Hentoff at Barnes & Noble in New York last week was a gas. It's not often that you get to hang out with the people you admire most, let alone share a dais with them in front of an audience. As far as the SRO audience was concerned, Nat could have told stories all night. I was there merely to light the fireworks' fuses by asking short questions about his jazz career and new book At the Jazz Band Ball.
By the way, if you haven't read Nat's Boston Boy: Growing Up with Jazz and Other
Rebellious Passions, you should (go here). The memoir gives you an up close look at where Nat came from, and the writing is as smooth as silk.
It's truly an honor to know Nat as a friend and a privilege that he asked me to serve as his interviewer. Then again, it's an honor to know all of the jazz legends I've come in
contact with over the past three years. My role is simply to preserve their stories and share them all with you. Also gratifying was to hear Nat rave about JazzWax. There's nothing more thrilling than recognition and praise from a childhood hero.
Von Streeter. The person who put up the following clip, from the film noir D.O.A. (1950), claims the saxophonist playing is Illinois Jacquet. Not so. It's Von Streeter, an r&b artist of the period, on-screen and, as readers point out, Maxwell Davis playing off-screen. I offer the clip to you here because it's so darn funny. Dig the actors playing audience hipsters...
Harvey Pekar (1939-2010), an underground comic-book writer
whose autobiographical American Splendor series perfectly captured the voice of the 1960s male—complete with obsessions, fear, distractions and uncertainty—died in Cleveland Heights, OH, on July 12. He was 70.
Pekar reached a certain level of fame in the late 1980s when he
appeared regularly on Late Night with David Letterman as something of an intellectual foil or modern-day Professor Irwin Corey. Pekar's life and struggles also became the subject of a 2003 movie, American Splendor, starring Paul Giamatti.
Like Robert Crumb, who illustrated many of American Splendor's early storylines, Pekar had a passion for jazz—albeit a more modern period than Crumb's focus. Pekar frequently wrote articles for jazz magazines as well as CD liner notes, including Sonny Stitt: The Bebop Recordings 1949-52.
Here's a jazz frame from one of Pekar's strips:
Gene Lees. Jazz musician Bill Kirchner will be featuring the music of the late Gene Lees on his Jazz From The Archives radio show tonight at 11 p.m. (EST). Lees wrote the lyrics to melodies by Antonio Carlos Jobim, Bill
Evans, Milton Nascimento, Lalo Schifrin, Roger Kellaway, Charles
Aznavour, Manuel DeSica, and others. Go here from anywhere in the world to access the show.
Nix stix. Jazz.FM91 CEO Ross Porter sent the following photo in an email bearing this subject line: "Session work definitely declining..."
Jimmy Rushing. Blues shouter Jimmy Rushing goes beautifully with the New York heat. Here he is with Billy Taylor and group in 1958, courtesy of Bret Primack:
Carol Sloane. If you're in New York on Tuesday, July 20,
vocalist Carol Sloane will be singing with an all-star group: Ken Peplowski, Byron Stripling, John Allred, Bill Charlap, Ted Rosenthal, Sean Smith and Lewis Nash. For more information, go here. And for Carol's blog, SloaneView, go here.
CD discoveries of the week: Violin and Salsa? Absolutely, and the pair work together splendidly in the hands of violinist Susie Hansen on
Representante de la Salsa. When I first saw this CD's cover, I must confess I worried that the contents would be light. Boy, was I wrong. This album is a first rate Salsa album—merging Hansen's electric violin with flute, horns, a strong percussion section and powerful vocals. If there's a Latin sleeper album of the summer, this is it. You have to love an artist who chooses to give Ides of March's 1960s soul-pop hit Vehicle a Salsa spin. If you dig Latin, I'm convinced this album will blow you away just as it did me. You can sample Susie Hansen's Representante de la Salsa at iTunes or here.
Coin Flip is trumpeter Nathan Eklund's fourth album as a leader. Interestingly, the CD has both a hard bop and fusion feel. But rather than create instrumental mayhem, as so many new
albums of this type do, Eklund and his group remain restrained, allowing the beauty of his nine originals to surface and seduce. The material is sophisticated, but there's a beauty and maturity to what you hear. Dig the moody The Supernatural or the lifting feel of Professor Dissendadt. Songs are intricate enough for the musicians to exhibit their chops, but the torque is geared for listeners rather than showboating. Also notable is Steve Myerson on Fender Rhodes, who gives the entire album a 1970s intelligence. You can sample Coin Flip at iTunes or here.
Oddball album cover of the week: Here's another one of
those compilations on the Fontana label, a subsidiary of Dutch Phillips Records. The art director who produced this series had an odd habit of seating his blonde models in strange positions in relation to the superimposed background photo of the featured artist.
I should have told you this from the start but Paul Bacon has
had a second career that has been even bigger than his first. Paul is perhaps best known today not as an LP-cover art director but as the inventor of book jacket design as we know it. Starting in the late 1950s, he has designed more than 7,000 covers, many of which were bestsellers, including Catch-22, Portnoy's Complaint, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Andromeda Strain and Slaughterhouse Five.
But before Paul brought new and exciting life to the book jacket, he was pioneering iconic concepts for jazz album covers that not only enticed the eye but also stimulated purchases.
In Part 4 of my four-part interview with Paul, the design maverick shares the stories behind a handful of Riverside albums—and the one cover that an artist disliked:
JazzWax: Let me ask you about a handful of album covers and how they came about. For example, Sonny Rollins’ Freedom Suite. Paul Bacon: That was largely the work of designer Ken Baren, who was my first hire. Ken was more likely
to do abstract stuff than I was—when I believed that an abstract approach was the way to go. For that cover, we went with a childlike feel to soften the cover’s title. The goal always was to create a compelling contrast.
JW: How about Chet Baker Sings: It Could Happen to You? PB: We just thought what we were selling there wasn’t
jazz but romance. None of us, including me, was particularly fond of the album. I thought Chet was OK on there and interesting as a singer. But all that infant-child breathlessness never impressed me much.
JW: How did that cover come about? PB: We decided the theme called for a glamour shot of Chet and left the execution up to Paul. The vision was to have Chet with a girl set in the mood for love. Chet was happy to do it, if he was off the junk long enough to be sober.
JW: How well did you know Baker? PB: I had only met him once before, in the parking lot at Riverside Records on 51st St. My wife and I had just been
in to see Bill Grauer when we saw this forlorn shape moving toward our car. It was Chet. He just managed to say, “Is Orrin [Keepnews] up there?” Chet was a type of phenomenon. He could play if he was really on. [Photo of Chet Baker by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]
JW: Was Baker authentic? PB: I suppose so based on his definition. For me, he was on the opposite end of the spectrum from Thelonious
Monk. Alfred and I once took Thelonious up to a radio station to appear on Fred Robbins' program. Fred wasn't a bad guy but in those days he was really ambitious but not yet hip. But he knew how to navigate the microphones [laughs]. [Pictured from left, drummer Sid Catlett and Fred Robbins by William P. Gottlieb]
JW: How did Robbins get along with Monk? PB: Fred didn’t know what he was dealing with in Monk. Fred probably never met someone who was incapable of lying.
JW: Why, what happened? PB: Fred talked a little bit, and Monk was muttering in his usual style. Then Fred played a record without
saying who it was. At the end, Monk said, “Well, it sounds like someone trying to play like Miles Davis.” In truth, it was Chet Baker. Fred was infuriated, though he didn’t show it at the time. Later Alfred told me that Fred told him privately, “Never bring that guy around again.” I guess Fred must have felt that Monk's comment was intended to tell listeners that Fred was square. Which, of course, wasn't it at all. Monk was simply saying what was on his mind, the truth. [Photo of Chet Baker and Miles Davis by Cecil Charles/CTSImages.com]
JW: How was Thelonious Monk’s Brilliant Corners photographed? PB: We talked about what we could do with the title track, Brilliant Corners. We also listened to the different
tunes. Then we tried different concepts, like Monk sitting in a corner or standing on a street corner, but they didn’t have any lift. They didn’t say anything. Then Paul came up with an idea.
JW: What? PB: Paul said, “I think I can do something with a multiple image.” Paul set up mirrors somehow. The cover you see was done with one shot using mirrors, not multiple images. Monk got a huge kick out of it.
JW: Why the surrealist cover for Monk's Misterioso? PB: The surrealists were cutting edge then, and I was
probably more aware of modern art than others in our group. We agreed that Giorgio de Chirico was about as serious as you could get when it came to surrealism.
JW: Why not Dali? PB: I didn’t really like Dali. De Chirico’s work is mysterious and suited Monk’s Misterioso title best. [The piece is de Chirico's The Seer from 1915.]
JW: And Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington? PB: When the Ellington band was first reorganized in
1929, it was called The Jungle Band for the sounds it created with plungers and so on. The Monk cover was an obtuse reference to that. I figured those who knew would get it.
JW: The Other Side of Benny Golson? PB: I thought it would be kind
of funny if we literally featured another side to Benny. Sometimes literalism pays off when handled the right way with the right typeface. Remember, we were totally unfettered. We had no real paragons to base things on.
JW: Did you have a favorite cover that you illustrated? PB: One of my favorites was an early Blue Note album
for Ike Quebec called Mellow the Mood. The cover was a deliberate attempt on my part to try my hand at French painting.
JW: Did a jazz artist ever hate a cover? PB: I did a cover for Steve Allen and Irene Kral in 1959. It was for United Artists, not Riverside or Blue
Note. They gave me the record to listen to and told me who was on it. I thought it was a smart album. I called it SteveIrene-o!—as a play on "Steverino," Allen's nickname. I thought it was clever.
JW: What did Allen say? PB: I was in an elevator soon after the album came out and Steve Allen was in there. Someone in the elevator said to him, “Hey, I saw your new album." Steve said, “I know. Isn’t that terrible?”
JW: What did you do? PB: I sneaked out on the next floor [laughs].
In the early years of LP cover design, there were no rules. The
only driving force was that a cover had to be graphically gripping. Designers then often worked with just two colors, and much rested on typeface solutions and the integration of motion, dimension and excitement. As one of the early jazz-album cover designers and art directors, Paul Bacon was free to follow his artistic instincts and invent a fresh, new cover look.
But Paul was also on the vanguard of a new artistic movement. Along with a handful of art directors and designers, Paul was creating a new mood and mystique for modern jazz. Like a box of cereal or a bag of potato chips, the jazz
LP in its infancy called for packaging that sold the promise of what was inside: the artist's genius and the joy of the music. In the LP era, the record-buyer's initial impressions and desires were in the hands of the art director, and jazz musicians knew it. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Paul developed that square 10-inch and then 12-inch plot of cardboard real estate for Blue Note and then Riverside and broke new ground.
In Part 3 of my four-part interview with Paul, the legendary art director and designer talks about creating a new look for modern jazz at Blue Note and his move to Riverside in the early 1950s.
JazzWax: What exactly is an album art director? Paul Bacon: The art director back then came up with the vision for the album cover either alone or with his team. Then he hired the talent to get the job done. In the case of Riverside, we had periodic cover meetings with Bill Grauer, Orrin Keepnews [pictured], photographer Paul Weller and me.
JW: How did the creative solutions emerge? PB: I'd have a concept or Paul Weller would think of some idea. Or we’d hear the music and think of a solution. In some cases Bill and
Orrin had strong notions about the cover. We’d also discuss the album title. For example, Everybody Digs Bill Evans in 1958, with its laundry list of musician endorsements was my idea. So was the look, with the different typefaces.
JW: How did that come about? PB: The problem we faced is that we had all of these rather flat lines of praise from other musicians. Very powerful endorsements. The challenge was this: What
do you do to make such comments interesting to the eye? We needed to come up with something graphically that would make their words look interesting while at the same time showing the potential buyer that the biggest names in jazz were Evans' fans. We decided to use white type on a tan background for the comments. But we had to find a way to work in the musicians who were offering praise. Designer Ken Baren and I simply faked the signatures in the artists’ own hand so the cover took on another dimension. It was a typeface solution.
JW: Early jazz-album covers were executed with illustrations, yes? PB: Yes. When I started doing album covers, they were pure graphic solutions. When Burt Goldblatt
came along in the early 1950s, he was a photo guy, and covers started to change. He spearheaded the idea of having fewer and fewer graphics on the cover and using images instead, except for the artist's name and album title, of course. [Miles Davis album design and photos by Burt Goldblatt]
JW: What was the goal? PB: We were trying to convey with graphics what jazz was about. At Blue Note, there were certain things that
I knew Alfred and Frank would not be happy with, such as too literal an image. I was very strongly influenced by those who came before me—like Alex Steinweiss [cover pictured] and Jim Flora. Alex had started doing album covers before the war.
JW: Who ran the art show at Blue Note? PB: I had absolute free reign. Alfred and Frank trusted me and thought I was good at it. I would think of an
album title, and my title often suggested something graphic. It was exciting, cool, fun stuff. We didn’t have much color in the early days. All we had to attract the buyer’s eyes was fun and whimsy in the illustration and color treatment. The Amazing Bud Powell was the first portrait I did on scratchboard for an album cover.
JW: Were cover artists jazz fans? PB: Absolutely. I was always listening to jazz and creating a mood in the covers that reflected the music and lifestyle I loved. There was no gravity. The beauty is we had plenty to work with.
JW: How so? PB: Classical was about the same music. Only the orchestra and conductor changed. In the jazz world,
the artists were all different and unique. Covers needed to rise to that level. In the case of Bud Powell [pictured], Frank Wolff gave me photos so I’d get a likeness on the scratchboard. Same with Milt Jackson.
JW: Yet your earliest covers focused on an older style of jazz. You had been a fan of the earlier music first. PB: Yes, at the start, everything I did for Blue Note was for albums by old-timers like Pete Johnson, Albert Ammons and Vic Dickinson. All good guys but totally
unconnected with what was going on in the late 1940s. The beginning of modern jazz for me was when Alfred played TheSquirrel with trumpeter Fats Navarro [pictured] and Ernie Henry on alto sax. I was knocked out. I remember saying, “That’s really dynamite.” Alfred smiled at me. He was just getting into it then. Everything was happening and new, and we were in awe of the talent. [Photo of Fats Navarro by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]
JW: Did you still enjoy Louis Armstrong? PB: I never lost my taste for Louis. At the time, we were still going down to the south end of Manhattan to hear Bunk Johnson. You could hear him on Friday and Thelonious Monk on Saturday. The city was wild like that then.
JW: But you were more than just a fan. PB: How so?
JW: You and other cover designers were the promoters of a new feeling, of a mystique. Your covers had to capture the energy and promote the hip qualities of the music. Covers couldn't be square. PB: True. We thought the music was great and that people should listen to it. I tried to get this point across
through the graphics. My illustrations were saying, “Forget what you know and forget what you think. Just listen to the music.”
JW: In this regard, you were a big promoter of Monk's. PB: I was trying to get others to listen to Monk’s music by designing compelling covers. I was slightly evangelical [laughs]. But that was true about virtually every artist, from the album covers to my reviews. The only things I ever bad-mouthed in print as a reviewer for Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews’ Record Changer were things I thought were pretentious.
JW: Why? PB: The Record Changer had started as a medium to help people collect records. Then Grauer felt it should also include opinions and articles, and he pushed me to express myself honestly in print.
JW: When Grauer and Orrin started Riverside and brought you over, your first cover was Randy Weston’s Cole Porter in a Modern Mood in 1954. PB: I had met Randy and thought he was a big talent.
One of the things floating in my mind for the cover was Cole Porter on the 90th floor of a building, the skyline at night and sophistication. We all loved Randy’s playing and wanted to advance him as a new artist. So in the cover, I wanted you to feel the music, the city and Randy's sophistication.
Tomorrow, Paul talks about a range of his Riverside covers and how they were created.
Paul Bacon is modest and soft-spoken. Since the
late 1940s, jazz musicians have sensed in the album illustrator, designer and art director a wise and gentle soul. This was particularly true of Thelonious Monk, who saw Paul as an unpretentious artist and sensitive thinker. For his part, Paul saw in Monk a creative genius who was impervious to conformity and allergic to hidden agendas. Paul felt strongly from their first meeting in early 1948 that Monk was everything a jazz musician should be and more. [Photo of Paul Bacon in 1996 by Hank O'Neal]
Paul first expressed how he felt about Monk in a deeply insightful essay. While Orrin Keepnews' Thelonious (published in the Record
Changer in 1948) was the first serious appraisal of Monk's music and mission, Paul's The High Priest of Be-bop: The Inimitable Mr. Monk in 1949 was the first reportage on Monk's quirky personality, drawing a connection between the pianist's frustrations and eccentricities and his unadorned creativity.
In Part 2 of my four-part interview with Paul, the album cover illustrator and designer talks about meeting Monk and the evolution of their symbiotic relationship.
JazzWax: When did you first meet Thelonious Monk? Paul Bacon: Sometime in early 1948. I often went to the Blue Note offices on
Lexington Ave. after working all day for Hal Zamboni. One night I was up at Blue Note’s offices with Alfred [pictured] and Lorraine. We were about to go down to their car to drive someplace to eat when Lorraine said, “I bet you don’t know who’s in the car.” I said, “Who?” She said, “Thelonious Monk.” I was surprised and curious.
JW: Did you know the name? PB: There had been some talk about Monk in the papers. This was the late 1940s. Usually the papers
seized on his eccentricities rather than his music. When we got downstairs, I sat in the back with him on our way up to Harlem to get dinner. He was fantastic. Along the way, he would listen to Alfred and Lorraine trying to figure out how to get where we were going. They would be debating the best way to go or where to turn. Monk would just chime in softly with things like, “Oh yeah, I see what you mean if you go this way.” He was just riffing on what they were saying but it sounded like he was part of the marital discussion.
JW: Were you at the Lions’ party in 1948 when Orrin Keepnews met Monk? PB: Yes. I can still hear Orrin’s voice as he spoke to
him. I thought at the time that Orrin was an extremely bright guy. I remember I had one flash of thought though: “Orrin, don’t try to understand too much of what Monk is saying.” Monk was extremely taciturn, but he and Orrin hit it off. [Photo of Orrin Keepnews, center, with Thelonious Monk, by Esmond Edwards/CTSImages.com]
JW: You and Monk had hit it off as well, yes? PB: Yes. Monk liked that I was primarily an artist and illustrator—not a writer with an agenda. In fact, he never
mentioned the stuff I wrote about him. And he always introduced me as an artist. I remember going to visit Monk late one night at around midnight in the green room at Birdland. I was telling him how tired I was and that I couldn’t stick around long. Then the door opened and in walked Charlie Parker. Monk said to me on the side, “Paul, do you know Bird?” I didn’t know him personally. So Monk brought me over to Parker. “Hey Bird, this is Paul Bacon. He’s an artist. “
JW: What did Parker say? PB: He said, “Yeah, I know.” Monk knew we hadn’t
met, so Monk pressed him: “Really? How do you know Paul?” Bird shot me a sour glance, implying that his life had been just fine before he had met me. So I jumped in and covered for him, saying something about having met him before.
JW: What was so special about Monk’s personality? PB: He was truly free. Most people weren't like that then. Most people were looking for angles. Monk was just sailing through looking for people who were emotionally honest. Bill Grauer and Orrin Keepnews very much wanted to interview him for the Record
Changer, and Orrin was able to do so beautifully. Orrin said to me later, “The fact that you were at that party didn’t do us any harm.” Orrin knew that Monk respected and liked me and that I would put him at ease. I always felt strongly about Monk's purpose. When Monk was arrested with Bud Powell in 1951 after the police found a packet of heroin in Bud’s car, I was one of the people who bailed him out. [Photo by Herman Leonard/CTSImages.com]
JW: Were you in the studios when Monk recorded? PB: Yes, all the time at Blue Note and Riverside. One time I was in
the studio sitting on a stool while they were listening to playbacks of what he had just recorded. I was going to leave but Monk put his arm around me to keep me there as we listened.
JW: How did you feel? PB: As though I had been knighted. Monk knew how I felt about his music. Once at the Lions’ apartment, Monk was listening to a playback of a recording. I saw Monk looking at my foot. He said, “You have good ears.” That was classic Monk.
JW: Did Monk also get you? PB: I think so. I was up in Harlem at a party in the early 1950s. Alfred took me up there. The apartment
was quite big and the place was crowded. Art Blakey [pictured] was there and a bunch of other guys. I remember one small older guy carrying a large turkey drumstick. The conversation started getting heated, Blakey was shouting, “Why don’t we put up our own hotel and keep the white people out.” I started to feel like I shouldn’t be there. [Photo of Art Blakey by Paul Hoeffler/CTSImages.com]
JW: What did you do? PB: There was a piano in an empty room. All the talk
was going on in the kitchen. So I sat at the piano in the empty room. I couldn’t play but I could figure out songs. I had small hands but could play 10ths and I figured out how to play Liza. All of a sudden I spot Monk peering in the doorway.
JW: What happened? PB: He came over to the piano, gently pushed me off the bench and said, “Draw!” Then he played the living bejesus out of Liza. [Monk wound up recording the song for the first time in 1956]
JW: Why do you suppose Monk had those tender feelings toward you? PB: I think he could recognize that I was easy going
and in awe of him. I think he also knew who I was deep down, and liked that I was an artist. He had pegged me as an artist based on a portrait of Meade Lux Lewis [pictured] I had drawn that was hanging in the Blue Note offices.
JW: How do you know that? PB: Monk said once when he introduced me, “Paul did a picture that’s on the wall there at Blue Note. It looks exactly like Meade Lux Lewis” [laughs]
JW: One of your most famous designed covers was Monk’s Music. How did Monk wind up in a red wagon? PB: The guy who took most of the photos for me at
Riverside was Paul Weller. He had a big studio. We wanted to get a photo made of Monk for the album cover. At the time, the art director was Harris Lewine. Harris had this idea to find a Trappist monk outfit.
JW: What did you think? PB: It sounded fine to me, but when we got to Weller’s studio and mentioned this to Monk, he flared up: “What kind of shit is that?” he said.
JW: What did you do? PB: I knew we had to get a photograph. I said to Harris, “Listen, Monk’s mad at me. But we have to do
something.” We looked over at Monk and he was half-sitting in a red wagon writing on sheet music. Paul had all kinds of props for photo shoots. I looked at Harris and Harris looked at me. Monk looked up. There was this pause. Then Monk said, “Yeah, go ahead.”
JW: Why do you think you were so attracted to Monk? PB: He didn’t lie and didn’t fake anything. And he was completely free of reverse prejudice. He didn’t care anything about politics. That was pretty liberating. He just thought, “I don’t have time for that crap.”
JW: Your famous essay, High Priest of Be-bop was originally published in France. Why? PB: I wrote it for the French magazine Le Jazz Hot at
the behest of Alfred Lion. It focused on Monk’s personality. At some point the Record Changer decided to publish it in English in 1949.
JW: Knowing Monk clearly changed your thinking about jazz—and certainly your outlook on art and life. PB: I had never known a great artist before. A truly great artist. Monk was so used to people trying to get him to do things for them. I didn’t care about any of that, and I think he liked that.
Tomorrow, Paul Bacon talks about the thinking behind some of his other well-known LP covers for Riverside Records in the 1950s.
JazzWax note: You'll find Paul's 1949 essay The High Priest of Be-bop in the Thelonious Monk Readerhere.
Even if the name Paul Bacon doesn't ring a bell, his covers for
more than 200 jazz albums will. Paul helped set the mood and mystique for modern jazz back in the early 1950s at the dawn of the LP jacket. Back then, Paul was the illustrator and art director of many early Blue Note albums and became Riverside's art director until the 1960s, when he went on to an even more illustrious career as a book-cover designer. [Photo of Paul Bacon in 2002 by Hank O'Neal]
Paul's covers include Thelonious Monk: The Genius of Modern
Music, The Amazing Bud Powell (which he also illustrated), Fats Navarro: Memorial Album, James Moody and His Modernists, Milt Jackson: Wizard of the Vibes and dozens of others. His art direction for Riverside includes Randy Weston:
Cole Porter in a Modern Mood, Thelonious Monk's Brilliant Corners and Monk's Music, Sonny Rollins' The Sound of Sonny and Freedom Suite, Chet Baker Sings, Everybody Digs Bill Evans and many more.
In Part 1 of my four-part interview with Paul Bacon, 86, the graphic designer and art director talks about growing up in Newark, N.J., the girl he met as a teen who would later change his career, his interest in graphic design, serving in World War II, and designing early covers for Blue Note:
JazzWax: Where did you grow up? Paul Bacon: I was born in Ossining, N.Y., but my family lived in many places in the New York City area. My father didn’t know
how to do anything and was 27 years old when the stock market crashed in 1929. In the 1930s, my family was broke. We bounced around from place to place. It wasn’t pleasant but it also wasn’t unusual. Many families faced the same difficulty. We settled in Newark, N.J. in 1939.
JW: Were you happy about Newark? PB: Yes. Especially since there was a "hot club" there.
I don't mean a nightclub but a club made up of teens who were passionate about jazz. The club was quite a serious enterprise. We met, we listened to jazz records and talked about the music all the time in school. [Pictured: Newark, N.J., in the 1930s]
JW: Where did you go to school? PB: I was lucky enough to attend Newark Arts High School, New Jersey’s equivalent of Manhattan's prestigious High School of Music and Art. At Arts High, you could major in art, music or theater.
JW: So you were already interested in jazz before your family arrived in Newark, yes? PB: Yes. My introduction came through the radio. My brother and I realized we were jazz fans after hearing Benny Goodman on the Camel Caravan show in 1935.
In Newark, we not only listened to Goodman and Artie Shaw but we met people who’d tell us about Bix Beiderbecke, Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith and others. The people who lived in Newark were older and hipper than we were. They had been listening to jazz and reading books like The Magic Mountain, which was foreign to us.
JW: Why did you feel drawn to jazz? PB: The music transported me to another place. In Newark, our jazz club had about 23 teenage members of every conceivable background. Some had great collections of records. My brother and I had records but we didn’t have a phonograph. But the club did.
JW: How did you first hear about the club? PB: We found it by making friends in school with Tony
Tamborello. I became fond of his whole family. Tony could play Bix’s In a Mist on the piano. Tony eventually became Tony Bennett's right-hand man. One day Tony Tamborello said that his girlfriend liked the same music we did and that she was a member of this jazz club. He was a musician and didn’t have time for the club. But he told her about my brother and me, and she brought us into the club.
JW: Who was the girl? PB: Lorraine Stein, who would marry Alfred Lion of Blue Note and later marry Max Gordon of the Village Vanguard, becoming Lorraine Gordon [laughs].
JW: What did you do after high school? PB: I took a job with Scheck Advertising, a small agency in Newark. I talked my way into it. They thought I knew far more
than I actually did. I could always draw, as well as write, sing and design. I was at the agency for two years and learned what I needed to know. I also was drawing and lettering on the side. Back then, if you wanted lettering on a poster or an ad, someone who knew how to letter had to do it by hand.
JW: Did World War II alter your plans? PB: I was drafted in 1943. My brother was already in the
Marine Corps. They wanted me for the Army but I insisted on the Marines because it was a family tradition. I was 6 feet tall and weighed 133 pounds so they let me in. I was sent to Guadalcanal, Guam and China.
JW: How was it? PB: I never heard a shot fired in anger. My brother was injured within 24 hours of landing at Bougainville Island in the South Pacific in late
1943. I stayed at Camp Lejeune in North Carolina until 1944. Eventually I was shipped out to the Pacific as a replacement. At Guadalcanal [pictured], the U.S. had already secured the island and there was a large base there. Then I spent time at Peliliu Island working. At this point I was a corporal. After Japan surrendered, I spent six months in China doing virtually nothing. In April 1946, the Marines sent me home.
JW: Where was your family? PB: They had moved to Union Beach, N.J., so my mom could have fresh air. My brother had gotten married. When I returned, I didn’t bother taking advantage of the G.I. Bill. I got a job for $30 a week at
Zamboni Associates on East 48th St. The person who hired me, Hal Zamboni, was a good typographic designer. I knew a fair amount about lettering and could draw. I was there for about nine years. We did mostly design work for companies, and I did the scratchboard drawings, which were popular at the time. Without getting too technical, it involved using a sharp tool to etch into a thin layer of clay coated in India ink.
JW: How did you meet Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff of Blue Note Records? PB: When I returned from the war, Lorraine Stein had married Alfred. I had already known of him and Frank in the years before Pearl Harbor. Members of Newark’s "hot club" knew them.
JW: Where did you meet Lion? PB: I had had a close friend in the Marine Corps, a radar guy. When I was living in N.J. after the war, I found his name in the phone book and
where he was living. I called him up and we decided to get together. One day I started off in the direction of his house near Union Beach but it started to rain. I realized I didn’t really want to go, so I called and told him I wasn't coming. Then I called Lorraine [pictured]. She invited me over to their place at 50 Grove Street. When I arrived, Lorraine, Alfred and I sat and talked and listened to records. That afternoon I became interested in modern jazz.
JW: When did you move into New York? PB: Soon afterward. One of the members of the "hot club" called and said, “You still want to live in New York?” He told me he knew a trumpet player who was looking for a roommate. Moving in those days was easy. You took your raincoat, typewriter and two albums and hailed a cab. Bob Dugan was the trumpet player, and I eventually married his cousin, Maxine Shirey, who was a dancer.
JW: Where did you live? PB: Where Hunter College is now, at 68th St. and Lexington Ave.
JW: How did you meet Orrin Keepnews? PB: Through his partner Bill Grauer. In the late 1940s, Bill and
Orrin published the Record Changer magazine. Bill had asked Alfred if he knew anyone who could write jazz reviews for the Record Changer and Alfred recommended me.
JW: How did you do? PB: I took to the music very quickly. I loved musicians like Fats Navarro, Bud
Powell and others, and I became the magazine’s modern jazz critic. My first review was Erroll Garner's Bouncin' with Me, which was recorded in 1945 but reissued on a 10-inch LP. JW: Did you do any illustrating? PB: Not at first. The Record Changer covers were
being illustrated by Gene Deitch. He also did a running cartoon that they ran in every issue. At first I just reviewed records.
JW: When did you start illustrating for the magazine? PB: When Bill Grauer found out I was a struggling graphic artist. He asked me to design the interior pages. I was already designing Blue Note album covers for Alfred and Frank Wolff and writing for the Record Changer. I also was doing a lot of scratchboards for Hal Zamboni. But I knew I could handle the extra work.
JW: What were your early Blue Note covers? PB: Pretty traditional stuff: Sidney Bechet, Meade Lux
Lewis, Albert Ammons. They were graphic visions of the music. They were drawn by hand and represented the best I could do at the time with two colors.
Tomorrow, Paul Bacon talks about meeting Thelonious Monk, why the pianist was so fond of him, saving Charlie Parker from embarrassment, Monk's soft spot for artists, and how Monk came to be photographed for Riverside sitting in a red wagon.
In the mid-1940s, Illinois Jacquet was one of only a few tenor
saxophonists who played in the styles of both Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young. Most tenormen of the period picked one influential approach or the other. Jacquet's ability to swing between both styles allowed him to chop away like Hawkins on r&b sides and sail along breezily like Young on ballads. Between 1945 and 1947, Jacquet exhibited these styles on the Apollo label, first in Los Angeles
and then in New York. Today, these vital sides not only demonstrate Jacquet's versatility but also provide a snapshot of r&b's development on a track that ran parallel to bebop's. All of Jacquet's sides for the label are on Illinois Jacquet: Jumpin' at Apollo (Delmark), a terrific single-CD collection. [Photo of Harry Edison and Illinois Jacquet in 1944 by Gjon Mili for Life]
The Apollo label was formed in New York in January 1944 soon after Decca came to a separate agreement with the American Federation of Musicians over the ban on recording. Columbia and RCA continued to hold out. In the wake of Decca's pact,
dozens of independent labels emerged to take the same deal, since recording simply required the renting of a Decca-owned studio. One of Apollo's early claims to fame was recording the first pure bebop session with Coleman Hawkins and Dizzy Gillespie in February 1944.
Apollo's office was located in a building near the Apollo Theater on 125th Street in Harlem. The label's owners also ran the Rainbow Music
Shop on the street level, providing the perfect distribution pipeline for the news discs. By 1945, Apollo opened a Los Angeles office to record new blues artists. Apollo's enterprising and shrewd owners also were jukebox operators, which explains why they were so hungry for so much product on both coasts.
Born in Louisiana and raised in Houston, TX, Jacquet moved to Los Angeles after graduation from high school in 1939 to study with Lloyd Reese, who also taught bassist Charles Mingus.
Jacquet joined Lionel Hampton's band in late 1940 and Cab Calloway's orchestra in 1943. Starting in July 1944, Jacquet appeared in Norman Granz' first Jazz at the Philharmonic concerts with Nat Cole and J.J. Johnson. He also appeared in the now-famous Warner Bros.' short film Jammin' the Blues. Later that year, Jacquet guested in Count Basie's band and then rejoined Jazz at the Philharmonic in L.A. [Photo of Illinois Jacquet in 1944 by Gjon Mili for Life]
Jacquet's first leadership date was for Aladdin Records in July 1945. A month later, Jacquet was recruited
by Apollo in L.A. to lead an octet backing blues singer Wynonie Harris [pictured] that included pianist Bill Doggett and Charles Mingus.
Recordings with Count Basie's band followed along with leadership sessions for Savoy. By August 1946, Jacquet was recording again for Apollo, this time in New York. His smaller group featured Joe Newman, Trummy Young, Bill Doggett, Freddie Green, John Simmons and Denzil Best. In May 1947, Jacquet's Apollo group was a sextet, featuring Newman, Leo Parker, Sir Charles Thompson, Al Lucas and Shadow Wilson.
Many of these Apollo tracks are jump blues that were meant to show off Jacquet's exuberant blowing skills. Diggin' the
Count, Bottoms Up and 12 Minutes to Go are prime examples of his spirited jukebox fare. But there also are more modern tracks that take a jazz tack. There's Jacquet's first recording of Robbins' Nest, with its laid back, linear feel that pre-dates cool; a modern execution of the ballad She's Funny That Way;Merle's Mood, a bouncy tune with a Paper Moon feel; and a supersonic Jumpin' at the Woodside with a furious solo by baritone saxophonist Leo Parker.
In addition to hearing Jacquet in his early honkin' and shoutin' mode, this CD collection shines a spotlight on Bill Doggett, who played a
fearsome swing piano with remarkable Basie overtones. This disc is evidence of how gifted Jacquet was from the very start of his career and shows yet again how much staggering tenor-sax talent there was on the scene on both coasts back in the mid-1940s.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Illinois
Jacquet: Jumpin' at Apollo (Delmark) at iTunes or here. The liner notes by Dan Morgenstern are superb, and the remastering is clean and bright.
JazzWax clip:Here's Illinois Jacquet in Jammin' the Blues (1944), directed by Gjon Mili. If you've never seen this short film that opens with Lester Young, you're in for quite a treat. Jacquet enters the film at about 5:25...
On average, 15 to 20 new jazz CDs cross my desk each week. Not
surprisingly, a fair number of them are by female vocalists. For some strange reason, the
track list is almost always heavy with tired standards. For instance, songs on CDs that
just came in include That's All, Smile,
The Very Thought of You, My Funny Valentine, Night and Day, Let's Call
the Whole Thing Off, and other weary American songbook
fare. [Pictured: Eleanor by Harry Callahan, circa 1947]
Why do so many good singers insist on diving straight into the clutter by choosing such weary numbers—all but ensuring that
their albums won't
matter? What makes singers think that selecting exhausted material is a
sure-fire road to fame and fortune? And what makes them think they have
something new to
offer that Nat Cole, Billie Holiday, Peggy Lee or Frank Sinatra missed?
Do they really believe the world is waiting eagerly for yet another
version of I've
Got a Crush on You?
Add Lady Gaga to the list. On the Today show on Friday, the Warholian holdover
attempted to Lady Day her way through, of all songs, Someone to Watch Over Me. I thought the art-house sensation had more of an imagination. (Missed it? Go here.)
The root of the problem for unknown singers, I assume, is Svengali-like managers or
producers who claim to have the secret formula for a hit
album. If I were a
singer hoping to be hip, the last song I'd want to record is I've Got You Under My
Skin or Nice Work If You Can Get It. They're dated and
predictable, and quite frankly they're lazy choices.
Note to
singers: The
person in your inner circle who insists you sing My Funny Valentine
is doing little for your career. Do yourself a favor and take
on the task of choosing songs yourself. Carmen McRae and Chris
Connor did. So did Blossom Dearie. All were famous for their deep
knowledge of song and for finding fabulous, offbeat gems.
Of course, choosing great, lesser-known songs requires curiosity and
some research. Which
doesn't take long
today. When I was a kid back in the 1970s, if you heard a jazz track on
the radio that you loved, chances are you wouldn't be able to
find it for years. Most older material was out of print on LP, and if
you really wanted the record, you had to pay a lot of money for it at a
collector's shop.
Today, virtually everything is available in seconds for $1 a
download. All you have to do is some digging, ask people who know, and
develop a gut for what's right for your technique and style. You may
like Star Dust, but trust me, we already have all the Star
Dust
we'll ever want or need.
Nat Hentoff and JazzWax—live! If you're in New York City this
Wednesday (July 14), I
will be interviewing jazz literary giant Nat Hentoff at Barnes &
Noble on 82nd St. and Broadway at 7 p.m. We'll be talking about his career, jazz, musicians and other topics. Nat will be signing copies of his wonderful new book, At
the Jazz Band Ball: 60 Years on the Jazz Scene.
Billy Taylor. Jazz videographer Bret Primack posted two clips last week featuring pianist Billy Taylor in a duet setting—one with Blossom Dearie and the other with Buddy Greco...
George Wein.Well-Rounded Radio host and producer Charles
McEnerney recently conducted an interview with Newport Jazz Festival producer and pianist George Wein. You can find the podcast of the interview here.
Rahsaan Roland Kirk. If you're down in Austin, TX, on August 6, stop by the Elephant
Room (512-473-2279). In honor of Rahsaan Roland Kirk's 75th birthday anniversary, the saxophonist's family and friends and musicians will celebrate the life of the late jazz giant. Proceeds from the evening will go to The Austin Jazz Workshop, a nonprofit organization that brings jazz musicians directly into public schools. For more information, go here.
Patricia Scot. Back in the 1950s, vocalist and songwriter
Patricia Scot recorded Once Around the Clock with the Creed Taylor Orchestra for ABC Paramount. She also recorded in the Midwest with several jazz artists. Her son, Adam Pace, has created a tribute site to Scot, who's still on the scene. You'll find the site here.
Bob Dorough. A New York City film
crew currently is filming a documentary about singer-composer Bob Dorough. But the crew is in need of funds to complete the project. To see a clip from the documentary and make a contribution to help the team raise funds and wrap up the project, go here.
Paul Slaughter. Jazz photographer
Paul Slaughter will be interviewed by John Greenspan on KSFR in Santa Fe, N.M. on Wednesday, July 14 at 10 a.m. (Mountain Time). They will be talking about Paul's new book, Paul Slaughter: Jazz Photographs 1969-2010. Go here to listen from anywhere in the world. Go here to preview and buy Paul's book.
Charlie Barnet. Reader Tom Fine sent along a link to a post at Hans Koert's Keep Swinging on Charlie Barnet's V-Discs found on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Go here.
CD discoveries of the week. By having the electric guitar run unison lines with the saxophone, Ratko Zjaca has produced a fascinating fusion-hard bop feel. The electric and
acoustic guitarist leads a quintet on Continental Talk that includes bassist John Patitucci, drummer Steve Gadd, saxophonist Stanislav Mitrovic and trumpeter Randy Brecker. The group blends together perfectly, working through intricate melody lines like the ones on Kurosawa and Correspondence or on more tender pieces like At the Crossroads and Home Again. This is jazz fusion with a heart. You'll find Continental Talk at iTunes or here
Pianist Gwilym Simcock is a delight to listen to. He devotes much of Blues Vignette (a two-disc set) to original compositions. No
matter what he takes on, Simcock dives in with authority and a jazz-classical technique that rises in intensity and falls off gently like a spring thunderstorm. What's also remarkable is how tender he can be when romping through songs like his Little People or Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil's On Broadway. You'll find Blues Vignette at iTunes or here.
Oddball album cover of the week. It's nice to see that some album producers and art directors back in the 1950s tried to level the sexual playing field. Jazz for Playgirls from 1957 featured
the Billy VerPlanck Orchestra with Phil Woods, Joe Wilder, Bill Harris and others. But based on the lighting, it appears our model is undergoing interrogation at some seedy Los Angeles police station where cops play jazz when they're through giving suspects the third degree. Or is she at home under the sun lamp?
Whenever I tell someone I dig reggae, I typically get a
quizzical look followed by, "Isn't reggae pretty much the same thing over and over again?" Not quite, since one could pretty much say the same thing about the blues, swing or bebop. As we know, each of these genres is just a category in which highly individual and inventive efforts are served up. Like r&b and the blues, reggae is singular music that features different complex rhythm patterns, subtle harmonies and, in some cases, nifty horn arrangements. [Pictured: early reggae artist Alton Ellis]
Over time, reggae has grown more complex and today incorporates rap, house and
even techno music. But since reggae's beginnings in the 1960s, the earthy music has had much in common with jazz, soul and pop, slipping into U.S. hits while borrowing deliciously from American forms in Jamaica. What emerged was a blending of Jamaican roots, Caribbean sensibilities and America soul.
When most people think of reggae, the songs that come
immediately to mind are Paul Simon's Mother and Child Reunion (1972), Eric Clapton's version of I Shot the Sheriff (1974), Stevie Wonder's Master Blaster (1980) and Blondie's cover of The Tide Is High (1981). But reggae entered
America's mainstream music much earlier. Millie Small's My Boy Lollipop (1965) has a reggae beat. So does the Beatles' Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da (1968). In fact, the latter song's lyrics about "Desmond" with his barrow in the marketplace is a nod to Desmond Dekker, a reggae artist whose big hit here a year later was Israelites (1969). But enough of the commercial stuff.
Reggae is a term that has come to mean all Jamaican music. But in fact, it originally was a term for specific style of Jamaican music that came into its own in the late 1960s, building on the
popularity of "ska," another form. Ska began in the late 1950s as a rhythmic style heavily influenced by the horns of hard bop and the feel of r&b and soul. Ska grew in popularity in the early 1960s as it borrowed from American pop hits of the day. Jamaicans who traveled to south Florida to work on farms during harvest season typically returned home with suitcases filled with 45-rpms purchased in American record stores.
Back home in Jamaica, these 45-rpms were played at
house parties, and Jamaican musicians soon were playing and recording their own versions of these hits, adding their own flavor, rhythms and horn riffs. Ska, in general, is more lively and upbeat than the laid-back, moodier reggae that followed. Reggae, in short, used a stricter rhythmic placement of chords known as the "one drop."
The record label that had the most success leveraging ska (and eventually reggae) was Studio One. Like America's Motown and Stax labels, Studio One developed a highly popular formula and sound. Studio One opened in 1957 in Kingston, and by the 1960s recording artists included John Holt, Alton Ellis, the Gladiators, Marcia Griffiths, the Heartbeats, the Termites and many others.
Rather than provide you with more and more history and analysis, here are six clips of my favorite Studio One artists. As you will hear, many of these examples of ska have an American soul feel with a rhythmic placement of jazz horns:
And here's one of my favorite John Holt tracks, OK Fred...
JazzWax tracks: If you dig these tracks, you'll find them on a download called
The Best of Studio One at iTunes or on the CD at Amazon here. The remastering is superb. Then you can drill down and explore each individual artist's works on different CD releases. This is fascinating music, and if you grew up in the 1960s, you'll recognize the
sound of America's independent soul labels from Detroit, Philadelphia and New York. Another tremendous CD is a compilation of Alton Ellis' material called Be True to Yourselfhere.
Fifty years ago, jazz and Broadway were friends. Jazz artists
routinely recorded swinging versions of the latest musicals or released roundups of new Great White Way tunes. Broadway was a more powerful influence on the culture then, of course, especially when shows destined for the silver screen had movie studios behind them.
During this crossover period, movie studios owned record companies (ABC Paramount, MGM-Verve, United Artists, etc.) and
encouraged pollination between jazz artists and the theater. In part, this was because many top jazz artists were playing part-time in Broadway pits or recording soundtracks in Hollywood. For the movie studios, jazz treatments gave shows and film theme songs a hip feel and exposed new audiences to the music. For jazz artists, it gave them a clean, worthy shot at pop.
But somewhere along the way, Broadway and jazz fell out, and today you'd be hard-pressed to find jazz artists recording contemporary Broadway showstoppers. Jazz artists either are never exposed to the new music or deem Broadway too square to adapt. The parting is unfortunate.
So let's roll the tape back to the late 1950s and early 1960s, when the jazz-greasepaint fusion was at its height. Here are six of my favorite jazz-Broadway albums:
Dick Marx—Marx Makes Broadway (1958). What a gem this
CD is! Half the album features Marx on piano with Irving Ashby or
Howard Roberts (g), Carson Smith or Red Mitchell (b) and Frank Capp (d)
behind him. The other half adds a swinging Buddy Collette on flute. Believe it or not, the album is available as a download at iTunes and Amazon.
Marty Paich—The Broadway Bit (1959). An all-star West Coast crew here for Discovery Records: Frank Beach (tp) Stu Williamson (tp,v-tb) George
Roberts (tb) Bob Enevoldsen (v-tb,ts) Vince DeRosa (fhr) Art Pepper (as) Bill Perkins (ts) Jimmy Giuffre (bar,cl) Victor Feldman (vib,perc) Marty Paich (p) Scott LaFaro (b) and Mel Lewis (d). It's available only on CD as an import or a Collector's Choice double with I Get a Boot Out of Youhere.
The Hi-Lo's—Broadway Playbill (1960). The vocal group
swings through a range of period theater fare, including a good chunk of Gypsy, which had opened the previous year and receives a zesty treatment here. It's available at iTunes (hidden away for $5.99) or teamed with Now Hear This (Collectables) on CD here.
Coleman Hawkins—Plays Make Someone Happy (1962). Hawk recorded several Broadway-related albums but this one for
Moodsville is best, featuring the definitive walking version of Make Someone Happy.The Man That Got Away and I Believe in You are terrific, too. Hawk is backed here by Tommy Flanagan, Major Holley and Eddie Locke. It's on the Coleman Hawkins on Broadway compilation at Amazon.
J.J. Johnson—J.J.'s Broadway
(1963). This
terrific album for Verve features four trombonists backing J. J.
Johnson—Lou McGarity, Urbie Green, Tom Mitchell and Paul Faulise. Hank
Jones, Chuck Israels and Walter Perkins round out the rhythm section. It's at iTunes and Amazon.
Woody Herman—My Kind of Broadway (1965). This one includes
a rich, ultra-slow Who Can I Turn To in the reed-centric spirit of Early Autumn arranged by Nat Pierce. It's available on CD here.
Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
