Like many gifted singers of her generation, Kay Starr wound-up a hard-boiled pop vocalist. When the LP era took hold in the early 1950s and the 12-inch LP appeared mid-decade with the ability to support a color photo on the jacket cover, many female singers with jazz and big-band chops chomped-down on the commercial bit and hauled in wagon-loads of popular music recordings. The list is too long to cite in full here, but we certainly can include Doris Day, Jo Stafford, Lena Horne, Margaret Whiting, Georgia Gibbs and Rosemary Clooney.
Starr, though, was a bit different from the rest. While all of the above singers had loads of talent and vocal charm, their accents were fairly smoothed-out, so you never really knew what part of the country they were from. By contrast, Starr's voice had rural power and edge through-and-through—an inflection that she hid for much of her early band days in the '30s and '40s but let run in the 1950s as Capitol tried to sell records in the South and Midwest.
Like Frankie Laine, who also started as an urban jazz singer before Columbia's Mitch Miller re-cast him as a whip-cracking muleskinner, Starr wasn't permitted to record many pure jazz albums in the LP era. Just as Laine's Jazz Spectacular with Buck Clayton in October 1955 is one of the few LPs that demonstrated his jazz skills and swing, Starr's I Cry By Night gave the pop chanteuse an opportunity to be blue with top jazz musicians, delivering a sound that was a cross between Billie Holiday and Edith Piaf.
I Cry By Night was recorded over two sessions in October 1961. Starr was joined on the first session by Ben Webster (ts), Gerald Wiggins (p), Al Hendrickson (g), Joe Comfort (b) and Lee Young (d). Trumpeter Mannie Klein replaced Webster on the second session.
The Oklahoma-born Starr is in crack form here, and Webster's obbligatos are among his finest blowing behind a vocalist. Though Starr did record Jazz Singer in 1960 with arrangements by Van Alexander, it's really a pop outing with a jazz orchestral counterbalance. The same goes for In a Blue Mood (1956), Blue Starr (1957) and Losers, Weepers (1960).
I Cry By Night, by contrast, is a saloon album. Sample My Kinda Love and P.S. I Love You. Or Lover Man. Starr brings the twang but she also brings the blues. What's more, she carries the entire date, dispatching her saucy intonation to shoulder the instrumentals. Soloists merely have to jump on and off what she's creating rather than drag her along, which was often the case on albums by pop singers who took a stab at jazz.
Kay Starr's big hit singles were Wheel of Fortune (1952), Side by Side (1953) and Rock 'n Roll Waltz (1956). All fine works that captured a period of time just before rock and roll. I only wish she had recorded more pure jazz albums with a producer who understood what was in her heart.
Perhaps Ms. Starr will reach out to me for an interview.
JazzWax tracks: Kay Starr's I Cry By Night can be found here as a remastered download. Or you'll find it teamed with Losers, Weepershere. Frankie Laine's Jazz Spectacular can be found here.
A JazzWax thanks to Stanley Cooper.
JazzWax clips:Here's Kay Starr in 1939, with Glenn Miller, singing Baby Me...
Here's Kay Starr in 1944, backed by Charlie Barnet, singing I Can't Get Started...
Here's Starr in 1952 on TV singing It's a Great Day and Wheel of Fortune...
And here'sI Cry By Night from the 1961 album of the same name, featuring Ben Webster on tenor sax...
Duduka Da Fonseca has one of the most softly insistent touches on the drums, particularly when he's using brushes. As he whisks up a rhythm, the sound is like the wind swinging through long-limbed willow trees. You hear the steady rustle of the leaves but the force is gentle and coaxing rather than trunk-splitting. This combed sound gives your ear a chance to enter Duduka's space, to hear what he's doing rather than merely feel the time he's keeping.
Since 1979, the Brazilian-born bossa-jazz drummer has recorded with many different artists and led many different types of groups. He's perhaps best known for being the founder and co-leader of Trio Da Paz. Duduka's new release, Samba Jazz/Jazz Samba (Anzic), continues his effort to integrate jazz and samba without the result sounding too commercial or gritty.
This is what sets Duduka apart: your ear hears a samba rhythm and you think you're about to be served up a Rio-pop recording. Instead, you're treated to a bossa with enormous jazz energy—meaning it's neither bossa nor jazz but a synthesis that at once soothes and challenges.
I caught up with Duduka, 61, last week to talk about his career and new album...
JazzWax: Is Duduka really your first name? It sounds like a royal title. Duduka Da Fonseca: [Laughs] My birth name actually is Eduardo. Duduka is a nickname my mother and grandmother used to call me. I had no idea what the name meant until I played with Astrud Gilberto in the 1980s in Washington, D.C. A radio station invited me on for a conversation and the interviewer, who was originally from Nigeria and spoke Yoruba, said “du-du” in Yoruba means black and “ka” means all over. So who knows?
JW: Growing up in Rio, do you remember the music scene in the late ‘50s and early ‘60s? DDF: Yes. I was born and raised in Ipanema, a beach area in the south of Rio de Janeiro. At that time, Ipanema was a quiet area with just a lot of houses. We played soccer in the streets, and once every half hour a car would pass by. It was a very gentle, musical place.
JW: What’s one of your first recollections? DDF: I remember going to the beach with my grandfather, before The Girl From Ipanema was written [in 1962]. My grandfather was a poet. Since there were so few people at the beach back then, he used to recite his poetry in a loud voice, to hear how his verses sounded. In the late '60s, the government finished building a tunnel that connected the city’s north zone with the south, and traffic grew along with the construction and tourists.
JW: You loved jazz from an early age, didn’t you? DDF: Yes. In 1964, when I was 13 years old, I formed a trio with my brother Miguel, who played bass. We modeled ourselves after the great bossa nova and jazz musicians who performed in Rio. By the time I was 15, I was playing in bossa festivals in Rio and on TV. This was the golden era of Brazilian music. In the late '50s and early '60s, Brazil was experiencing a cultural explosion. Bossa Nova was created, the president of Brazil was well-liked, and for the first time Brazil was the world champion in soccer. There was an enormous sense of pride.
JW: So why did you move to New York in 1975? DDF: I moved to pursue my dream to play with great American jazz musicians. From the time I was a kid, my parents loved to listen to musicians like Louis Armstrong, Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker, Ray Charles, Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole—along with Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Dorival Caymmi, Jonnhy Alf and many others who were influential. So I grew up listening to bossa nova and jazz and fell in love with them. Even then I wanted to find new ways to mix samba with jazz—in equal parts. Most people who played jazz used the bossa as a rhythm, and most artists who played bossa used jazz to showcase solos. I wanted to have them both together but distinct, not one serving the other.
JW: Where does your new album fit in with this evolution? DDF:Samba Jazz/Jazz Samba is another attempt to achieve perfect balance, since it can be either/or. A distinguished journalist, Bill Milkowski, recently said that my music can be jazz samba or samba jazz—meaning that the emphasis can be viewed from either side. This is where the title comes from.
JW: Jazz seems to be having a hard time attracting new fans. Is this also true of Brazilian music? DDF: We perform for the love of the music—that is our motive, not necessarily to be commercially successful. Of course, we need to make money. But playing jazz and Brazilian music is a labor of love. In earlier years, I believe that there were more places in American cities to play jazz. A lot of things have changed thanks to the Internet.
JW: How so? DDF: People used to communicate by talking. If you needed something or wanted to know something, you called up and had to talk on the phone to express yourself. Now everybody just sends emails, so verbal communication and even leaving your house to attend a performance can no longer be as special as it once was. So much is available on the computer. It's a double-edge sword.
JW: Ever feel the urge to move back to Rio? DDF: I moved to New York in ’75 when I was 24 years old. I love New York and have been living in Manhattan for most of my life. Naturally, I also love my Rio—I was there already twice this year. I go there to relax and be with my family, and also to record and play. In fact, I am going very soon to Rio to finish up an album with my Brazilian-based trio, featuring David Feldman on piano and Guto Wirtti on bass. This is going to be a follow up to our CD Duduka Da Fonseca Trio Plays Toninho Horta.
JazzWax tracks: Duduka Da Fonseca's quintet features Anat Cohen (ts, cl), Helio Alves (p), Guilherme Monteiro (g), Leonardo Cioglia (b) and Duduka (d). You'll find the Duduka Da Fonseca Quintet's Samba Jazz/Jazz Samba (Anzic) here.
JazzWax clip: To hear tracks from the album, go here or click below...
And for Duduka's magnificent brushwork, here's Duduka in 2000 playing Bala com Bala from his Samba Jazz Fantasia release...
Over the past 95 years, jazz has repeatedly had to drag fans kicking and screaming into the future. Most fans like what they like and don't care much for new jazz styles, especially those that are radically different from the music they favor. While jazz certainly must evolve if it is to survive beyond the museum, most young musicians today seem to go out of their way to ignore yesterday while trying to create a new tomorrow. Not so Joe Alterman, who just released his second album, Give Me the Simple Life (Miles High).
Joe graduated from New York University's music program in 2011 and is teaching a course there now. Unlike many young jazz graduates, Joe spends a good deal of his time asking jazz legends about their art and incorporating what he's learned into his playing. Conversing with jazz elders and decoding the secrets of their music recorded so many years ago would seem to be a waste of time today. Once upon a time, young jazz artists apprenticed with older jazz players. No more. Now you have to seek them out—if you even care.
What Joe has learned has improved his interpretive style. As a result, his sound often hearkens back to the '50s—blending touches of Red Garland, Ahmad Jamal [pictured above] and Wynton Kelly.
This isn't a parlor trick for Joe. His goal isn't to ape these musicians. Instead, he's merely exploring earlier styles in an effort to find his own bag. That bag clearly includes a healthy respect for jazz's vinyl era, which has been shoved aside by a more percussive attack. Which is a shame, since both are important.
First, a bit of disclosure. I wrote the liner notes to Joe's new album (and his last one). But since I only take on writing projects for albums I truly love, I'm praising music I would have raved about here anyway.
What most musicians like about Joe's personality is that he's gentle and curious. He listens a lot more than he talks, and there's an inviting Southern charm about him that encourages others to share what they know (Joe's from Atlanta). Which is why bassist James Cammack [pictured above] and drummer Herlin Riley [pictured below] agreed to gig and record with Joe. Both work regularly with Ahmad Jamal, and both heard in Joe a kindred spirit and a talent on the move. It's also why tenor saxophonist Houston Person was at the recording session and joined the trio for four tracks.
What did Joe learn from his conversations with Person [pictured] over the past year?
"Houston told me to be mindful of two things. First, connect with the audience. He said, 'People who are coming to see you are paying money. They want to enjoy themselves. Play for the audience, not the reviewers. It's a big responsibility you have.' And second, he said, 'Never lose the blues. Musicians who lose the blues sound like they're practicing.'"
Nearly everyone whose ears have been nourished by music of the '40s and '50s hears something in Joe—a yearning to move forward by reaching back. Joe knows the old stuff and loves it. Maybe he's nuts. Maybe he should be integrating samples and keyboard programs into his music. Or maybe he just hears something that a lot of students coming out of music schools miss: Pianists in the '50s had enormous grace and beauty, and their chord voicings and taste had meaning. [Pictured above: Houston Person]
Joe shows the love on his new album. There are 12 tracks—two are originals and the rest regal standards. Included are They Say It's Spring, I Guess I'll Have to Dream the Rest, An Affair to Remember and Give Me the Simple Life.
Give Me the Simple Life is spare, with a lyrical and swinging Jamal-ian feel. Oscar Peterson's Kelly's Blues is thick and rollicking. I Guess I'll Have to Dream the Rest is a slow and steady ballad, with a smokey solo by Person [pictured above].
Joe is maturing and I dig where he's heading. Love your audience and hold onto the blues. Great advice from Houston Person. I'd add a third: Learn from the past.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Joe Alterman's Give Me the Simple Life (Miles High) here.
Photographer Bob Willoughby was a friend of JazzWax. Before his death in December 2009, we corresponded about a book idea he was shopping around from his home in Vence, France. Bob and I first became acquainted when I asked him for the story behind his famous photos of tenor saxophonist Big Jay McNeely performing at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles in 1951. What knocked me out in particular, was the euphoria on teens' faces as they listened in ecstasy to Big Jay playing on his back from the stage. [Pictured at top, Bob Willoughby and Jean Seberg during the filming of Saint Joan in 1957 by Bob Willoughby; below, Bob's photo of Big Jay McNeely]
When Bob and I began emailing, he seemed resigned to the fact that his new book might not be picked up by a publisher and frustrated that his contribution to jazz and R&B might be forgotten. As he wrote me in July 2009...
"This is a new book with so much more in it [than my earlier books], including a section shot in Stuttgart two different years [1992 and 1994] when they brought me out of retirement to photograph their jazz concerts. With the publishing world being what it is, photo books are expensive and don't sell like Harry Potter. If you know of a publisher who would like to do my Jazz, Body & Soul book, do let me know. I like your site, and I am sure we can work together again. Our part of France is very lovely today. All good wishes, Bob [pictured]."
I am happy to report that Bob's project did find a home, and the result has just been published. I am also happy to tell you that Bob Willoughby's Jazz: Body and Soul (Evans Mitchell Books) contains one revealing photograph after the next, exposing you to different sides of artists you know. But there's a mystery here: How a 192-page, hardcover book of gorgeous black-and-white images can cost only $21.79 is beyond me. But take advantage of the price before the copies are all snapped up.
Born June 30, 1927 in Los Angeles, Bob received a camera as a present on his 12th birthday. After high school, he studied cinema at night at the USC Cinema Department and design with Saul Bass at the Kahn Institute of Art. He also apprenticed with several Hollywood photographers, including Wallace Seawell, Paul Hesse, and Glenn Embree. [Photos of Elvis Presley and Sophia Loren in 1958 by Bob Willoughby]
Bob's career as a professional photographer began in 1954 when Warner Bros. hired him to capture Judy Garland's final scene in A Star Is Born. His portrait of Garland became his first Life magazine cover. For the next 20 years, Bob's images for Hollywood's film studios found their way into print weekly. These photos were taken on the sets of more than 100 films, including My Fair Lady, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Graduate and Rosemary's Baby.
What makes Bob's images of movie stars special is their intimacy and journalistic integrity. Even though Bob was hired by studios to portray subjects as glamorous stars, he always found a way to humanize them—either by waiting for moments of vulnerability and angular intensity or situations that brought them down to earth. The average movie-goer saw Bob's photos and said to themselves, "Hey, they're just like me—only different." [Photo above of Audrey Hepburn by Bob Willoughby]
Bob didn't discriminate. He used the same approach with iconic jazz musicians years before he turned pro. Bob loved jazz and R&B—which were impossible not to appreciate in Los Angeles of the late 1940s and early 1950s. In my email conversation with Bob about the Big Jay photos, Bob said he was in his darkroom when he heard about a concert at the Olympic. [Photo above by Bob Willoughby]
When he arrived, Bob said, he was astonished by both the energy of the performance and the trance-like reaction by teens. At the dawn of small-group R&B, Bob rushed to the stage where the action was unfolding and began clicking. These photos are included in the book and explain in pictures why jazz would soon lose its appeal among young listeners.
In Jazz: Body and Soul, each of Bob's jazz images—from Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday to Gerry Mulligan, Peggy Lee and Paul Desmond—portrays these artists mid-performance and fully aware of their specialness and impact on audiences. [Photo of Peggy Lee above by Bob Willoughby]
As Dave Brubeck notes in the book's introduction...
"By 1951, the [Dave Brubeck] trio that had broadcast on NBC had become a quartet with the addition of Paul Desmond on alto saxophone. We were making our first West Coast appearances away from home ground, San Francisco, when we met Bob Willoughby. It was a big deal. We got into our cars (mine was a Kaiser Vagabond) and drove to Los Angeles to play at a club called The Haig, a converted bungalow situated across the street from the Ambassador Hotel.
"Gerry Mulligan, Chet Baker and I had made a trade. They would play at the Black Hawk, our San Francisco headquarters, while we took over their regular spot at The Haig. During that initial engagement, Bob Willougby took some spectacular photos of our group.... Paul [Desmond] and I always felt at ease with Bob behind the camera. He not only had a good eye, he had a keen ear, and seemed to know when to snap an inspired moment." [Both album cover images above by Bob Willoughby]
Like all great jazz photographers, Bob was big on juicing the mystique of jazz. His image of June Christy at the Rendezvous Ballroom in Balboa, Calif., in 1950 is a perfect example. She's a portrait in italic—leaning forward on the piano in profile with a citrus-y smile on her face that exposes her natural excitement. Gerry Mulligan, also in profile, was photographed in full playing the baritone saxopone—giving you a sense of how gangly he was (and how large his feet were). [Photo of June Christy above by Bob Willoughby]
Bob loved working in the track lighting above subjects in studios, which added to the drama and "sound" of an image. There are "lights above" images of Desmond, Mulligan, Baker and others. Bob also often photographed jazz musicians at rest. His candid of Baker relaxing on a folding chair portrays the raw and restless confidence of the laid-back trumpeter. Or dig the candid of Harry James talking to Gene Krupa between takes on the set of The Benny Goodman Story in 1955. [Photo of Chet Baker above by Bob Willoughby]
Bravo EMB. You not only made Bob's dream come true, you've also reproduced his images and words lovingly and at a price-point most people can afford. To this day, Bob's images make me want to reach for the recordings to hear what these artists sound like. [Photo of Gerry Mulligan above by Bob Willoughby]
JazzWax notes: To read my post on Bob Willoughby's famed photo of Big Jay McNeely and the Olympic Auditorium concert, go here.
A month after saxophonist and dear friend Hal McKusick died in April, the jazz band at The Ross School in East Hampton, N.Y., where Hal taught for many years, performed a tribute concert in his honor. If you're familiar with Hal's sound, you can hear his light, airy touch and voicings in the pieces as well as his influence on the students. Hal is sorely missed...
Jazz Samba radio. My boy "Symphony" Sid Gribetz will slip on his black Wayfarer sunglasses and pointy black patent leather shoes for his "Jazz Profiles" feature this Sunday honoring Jazz Samba, the first major bossa nova album in the U.S. recorded 50 years ago this year (February 13, to be exact). The album featured Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd and was produced by Creed Taylor. Five hours devoted to the album and its influences. Tune in on your computer from anywhere in the world from 2 to 7 p.m. (EDT). Go here.
Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story. Director Raymond De Felitta's powerful documentary Booker's Place: A Mississippi Story—which explores the 1960s murder of a black club owner in a Southern town—will be featured on NBC's Dateline this Sunday, hosted by Lester Holt. Time: 7 p.m.(EDT). It's a chilling work by the director of 'Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris. Here's the trailer...
Jackie DeShannon. Singer-songwriter Jackie DeShannon (Put a Little Love in Your Heart) emailed last week to chat and tell me about her latest work—a project to raise awareness and funds to help end drought in Africa. Her moving piece, with enormous vocals, is called For Africa, in Africa (it's available at iTunes and here, and Jackie says a portion of the proceeds will go to Water.org). Here's the video...
Pauly Cohen. Bret Primack is embarking on a documentary that will focus on jazz trumpeter Pauly Cohen. But first, he has to raise some cash. Here's more on Bret's venture at Kickstarter.com...
Michael Ybarra (1966-2012), the Wall Street Journal'sextreme-sports correspondent, an author and a friend of mine since the mid-1990s, died over the weekend of June 30 and July 1 on a recreational rock climb in Yosemite National Park. He was 45. In our many e-mail exchanges, Mike routinely expressed his love for the wilderness, the thrill of pushing oneself physically and, most of all, his awe of nature's raw beauty—particularly when dwarfed by its size and power. I'll miss Mike, a graceful writer and one courageous guy. For a selection of his Wall Street Journal columns, go here.
Art Pepper. Another free download from Laurie Pepper, Art's widow. This month, Mambo Koyama. Go here.
Music and echo. For those unfamiliar with what reverb is, as it pertains to recording, reader Greg Lee sent along a link to a fabulously informative article in the Atlantic by William Weir. Go here.
Herb Snitzer—on sale. Photographer Herb Snitzer is moving out of his studio. Bad for him, but good for you. He is selling silver gelatin prints of his works (like the one above of Thelonious Monk) at 70% off. Visit his site here. Then give him a call directly at (727) 692-7646.
Coleman Hawkins. Last week, Will Friedwald had a fine piece in the Wall Street Journal on tenor saxophonist Coleman Hawkins and the new Mosaic box set. To read it, go here.
Oddball album cover of the week. There are a million stories in Gotham and a broken heart for each and every one of them. Here, the cover of an album by bebop vocalist Babs Gonzales features one of those stories and bit more than just a broken heart. I'm not sure what tale this is or why it illustrates "cool philosophy." Also unclear is whether our model is getting into the car or was just booted out.
In today's Wall Street Journal (go here), I write about one of the most dramatic and influential hits of the early 1960s—the Righteous Brothers' You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'. The song was written in the summer of 1964 by Cynthia Weil, Barry Mann and Phil Spector, and the single remains one of the finest examples of Spector's "Wall of Sound" productions. Thanks to the lead vocal of Righteous Brother Bill Medley (and backup by the late Bobby Hatfield), it's also one of the first grownup, sensitive-male songs of the era—marking the end of the teen-idol years. [Pictured at top: Bill Medley]
The term "wall of sound" was first used by writers in the early '50s to describe the impact of Stan Kenton's band—the shattering blast of brass the orchestra delivered in concert. But in Spector's case, the term was coined by Andrew Loog Oldham [pictured], the stylish British publicist and Rolling Stones manager and producer who was hired to build buzz for the Righteous Brothers' hit in the U.K. prior to its release there.
But Oldham in 1964 faced a problem. According to Mark Ribowsky's book, He's a Rebel: Phil Spector: Rock 'n' Roll's Legendary Producer, Cilla Black had rushed out a cover of You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' in Britain before the Righteous Brothers' single was imported there.
Oldham defiantly took out large print ads to hard-tout the Righteous Brothers' soon-to-arrive hit. Some of his ads called the song and Spector's production approach "Tomorrow's Music Today" while another said the song delivered a "Wall of Sound." From there, the term was picked up by writers in the U.K. and the U.S. to describe Spector's signature studio approach.
In essence, Spector's "Wall of Sound" was a recording technique that featured the overdubbing of multiple tracks of instrumentals and vocals to create an enormous and dramatic backdrop for the featured singer or singers. You can hear this layered sound on early-'60s hits by the Ronettes, the Crystals and other groups.
But the sound's high point, for me, is You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' (Spector's own favorite is said to be Ike and Tina Turner's River Deep, Mountain High).
How big a deal is the sound? Very. The dense, orchestral approach to R&B began with Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, when they and orchestrator Stanley Appelbaum layered-in strings to the Drifters' There Goes My Baby in 1959. Phil Spector worked for Leiber and Stoller at the time. When Spector left, he developed his own "big sound" by overdubbing tracks. [Pictured above: Mike Stoller, left, and Jerry Leiber at the mike]
Spector, in turn, had a big influence on Brian Wilson, whose Pet Sounds was the Beach Boys answer to the Beatles' Rubber Soul (1965). Pet Sounds led to Smile, the aborted Beach Boys project in 1966-67 that was only recently issued. In 1967, the Beatles released Sgt. Pepper's, which is really an adaptation of Spector's layered approach. Spector, of course, was later called in to save Let It Be (1970) when the original didn't hold together. The Long and Winding Road is considered a "Wall of Sound" production.
At any rate, between 1961 and 1966, Spector's "Wall of Sound" would help establish him as one of the most successful pop-rock producers, with more than 20 Top 40 hits. Today, of course, Spector is serving an 18-year-to-life term in California for second degree murder. A sad story all around.
For today's Wall Street Journal article, I had the pleasure of interviewing Cynthia Weil (lyrics) and Barry Mann (music)—one of several wife-and-husband teams who toiled at New York's Brill Building during the "Teen Pan Alley" years in the early 1960s. They are as warm and as charming as can be and hugely informative about the early days of pop-rock. They also wrote Just a Little Lovin' (Early in the Morning), Kicks, On Broadway, We Gotta Get Out of This Place, Shape of Things to Come and Somewhere Out There.
I also had an opportunity to speak at length with Bill Medley [pictured], the suriving member of the Righteous Brothers (Bobby Hatfield died in 2003). Bill is as humble as can be and one of the kindest souls. He still loves the song that made him and Hatfield famous and he's still in awe of Spector's production skills.
Here's the story of You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' from Bill's vantage point as told to me during our conversation on Wednesday for my Wall Street Journal article...
"When Barry [Mann, pictured] and Phil [Spector] first auditioned You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ for me and Bobby in 1964, the song was several keys higher than how it appeared on the record. The reason we wound up lowering it was I couldn’t get that high note toward the end. By lowering the key of the entire song, it worked. At first, when Barry and Phil played it, I thought the song sounded perfect for the Everly Brothers, not us. I love the Everly Brothers, but Bobby and I were about soul.
"Up until this point, most of our songs had been pushy, fast rock and R&B. That’s how we came to be called the Righteous Brothers and so-called founders of blue-eyed soul. Black disc jockeys loved us and hipped audiences to who was singing by saying, “Here’s a hit by my blue-eyed soul brothers.” I never really liked the term, frankly. If you have soul, you have soul, no matter the color of your eyes. But it was a tribute just the same.
"A few weeks after Barry, Phil and Cynthia [Weil] played it for us, I went to Gold Star Studios [in Los Angeles] where I watched Phil record the instrumental tracks. I wish Bobby and I could have recorded live with the Wrecking Crew [studio musicians] live. But Gold Star was too small. That day, the studio was jammed to the walls with musicians. I also got to watch Phil at work.
"Phil spent hours recording tracks using different instrumental combinations. First he recorded just the rhythm track. Then he added the horns and other instruments. Then he put the strings on. The Blossoms, the backup singers, went in last, but not that day. They were added after Bobby and I recorded the vocals about a week later. [Pictured above: Larry Levine, left, Phil Spector, middle; photo by Ray Avery/CTSImages.com]
"Phil had a two- or three-track recorder. On the You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feelin’ session, he had three pianists playing at once—one on an electric piano, one on an acoustic piano and one on a tack piano. What was amazing is that he’d mix them live. In other words, as they played, Phil adjusted the levels differently on each piano, and the resulting live-to-tape sound came across like a synthesizer.
"Once he had that, he recorded three or four guitars—all playing the same figure. There was a chime in there—what we commonly call bells—and perhaps a big triangle. There were two basses, drums and a percussionist who played four different instruments at once—bongos, vibes, tambourine and a shaker. He was brilliant. He did of that all live, no overdubbing.
"Throughout the instrumental recording, Phil stayed in the engineer’s booth with [engineer] Larry Levine. He rarely went into the studio where the Wrecking Crew musicians were. He’d tell them over the monitor speaker what he wanted. But the Wrecking Crew knew exactly what to do based on his direction.
"Phil might have come out to show what he wanted on the piano or guitar, but then he went right back into the booth. He knew exactly what he wanted to hear, and those musicians were the best in the world. They were so inventive and intuitive. They’d just sit and wait patiently until Phil told them what he wanted and they’d hit it perfectly. [Photo above by Ray Avery/CTSImages.com]
"I remember that Barney Kessel was one of the guitarists, and during the chorus played the melody to El Paso [recorded by Marty Robbins in 1959]. It was so cool. You can’t really hear him do it on the record because the melody line is drowned out. It’s funny, when I said to Phil, “Hey, Barney’s playing El Paso,” he said, “Nah, that’s not El Paso, that’s a phrase from a symphonic piece.” [Pictured, from left, Vince Terri, Barney Kessel and Bobby Gibbons, with Vito Mumolo playing the Gibson Barney Kessel model in February 1961; photo by Jay Timbrell]
"Glen Campbell was on guitar, too, and Leon Russell was on one of the pianos. Sonny Bono played tambourine, and the drummer was Earl Palmer [pictured]. Gene Page did the arrangement. Larry [Levine], Phil’s engineer, would just sit there and do what Phil asked. He’d have input as far as telling Phil what he could do and couldn't do technically, but it was all Phil’s show. When the instrumental tracks were in the can, Phil let the musicians go and mixed the result with reverb. Today, all of that music would have to be on 50 tracks.
"No celebrities were in the booth when Phil was recording the instrumental tracks. He wouldn’t let anyone in when he did them, to keep what he was doing a secret. That changed when Bobby and I came in to do our vocal tracks. That day, there were no musicians in the studio. All the music Phil had recorded was coming through the headphones we were wearing. But the engineer’s booth was jammed. Phil would invite everyone in town when vocals were being put down, since all the instrumental magic—the overdubbing—was already on tape. I remember two of the Rolling Stones were in the booth that day. Bobby and I were opening for them on their first American tour.
"The day Bobby and I recorded was amazing. Hearing enormous track coming through the headset even before the backup singers were on there was great and weird at the same time. I had never done anything like that, and I was down in my lower voice, which was odd for me. When I put on the headphones, the music sounded as big as Montana, with a touch of New York. It was just odd to sing against that enormous backdrop. It was like driving in England on the other side of the street.
"We did the vocal tracks over two days—four hours each day. Phil had a fascinating way of working. For example, he’d have me sing the first verse over and over again until he was happy. Then we’d move on to the next part and repeat the process. Meanwhile, he was wiping the tracks by recording over them. He didn’t keep anything. Bobby and I were young—we were 24 years old. It was a lot easier to sing than the stuff we had been singing. We still had some frustration with Phil’s process a couple of times, but what he wanted always sounded better.
"On the record, what you hear are about 20 different parts from the entire session. Phil didn’t splice. He’d overdub. When we sang something he liked, he’d keep it and we'd move on. By the bridge, he just let us be the Righteous Brothers, letting us cut loose.
"What do I think of the song? I think it’s one of the greatest songs ever written. Barry is such a great melody writer and Cynthia can say the simplest things with her lyrics and make them sound so wonderful and heartfelt and so...begging. I don’t know how she does it. The song is brilliant and stands on its own.
The production value of the record also is amazing. Too often people just listen to the melody. But listen to all the stuff that's going on in there! How Phil slowed down the tempo, added enormous track and had my voice down low with Bobby doing the chorus. It’s pure genius when you think about it. It’s a perfect record. [Pictured above: John Lennon and Phil Spector]
"Every time I’m on stage I have to sing the song. The challenge for me isn't avoiding growing tired of singing it. I don't. The challenge is how do I keep making it believable. For me, when I walk on stage, I leave the 71-year-old Bill Medley behind and the 24-year-old is up there. Truly. That’s the way I feel the minute I start that song. Then the crowd reacts and I’m back in my 20s.
"I think Phil might have been a bit miffed back then that it became a Righteous Brothers record rather than a Phil Spector record. But he told us we did a great job and said it was going to be a huge hit. He was right.
"What did Elvis Presley think of my voice on there? Elvis told me it was one of the greatest songs in the world. He was a big fan of the way I sang, which blew me away. He loved bass singers. We became friends, especially when I began working in Las Vegas. I was able to spend time with him at Graceland, too.
"The Righteous Brothers sort of replaced Frankie Avalon and Fabian and all the teen heartthrobs. We never considered ourselves good looking or handsome like those guys. We were just regular, normal guys. But unlike all those other guys, we were adults, and I think that gave our vulnerability in You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' an extra edge.
"Not many people know that when I recorded the lead vocal on the song in the summer of '64, I was singing from experience. During my childhood, I had a lot of nervous tics and twitches and was insecure about that. I wasn’t particularly a strong, tough, standup guy. I also had a reference point to channel my feelings. Two years earlier, my wife at the time of the recording—Karen—was my girlfriend and had broken up with me for about six months. I really ate it. That's the ache you hear on that song."
JazzWax note: Who was Gene Page [pictured above], the song's arranger? One of the most prolific soul and R&B orchestrators of the '60s and '70s. If you owned a radio or a record player back then, you know his work well. To learn more, go here.
JazzWax tracks: There are several excellent Phil Spector sets from Sony Legacy here, here and here. Superb Righteous Brothers collections are here and here. There's a collection of Cynthia Weil and Barry Mann's music here.
JazzWax clips: What's particularly fascinating about You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin' is that despite being covered dozens of times (including four that also made the Billboard Hot 100 chart), the Righteous Brothers version remains definitive and most credible.
Here's Cilla Black's version that was rushed out in the U.K. to grab market share before the Righteous Brothers version was released there...
Here are the Righteous Brothers. This is the best-sounding version I could find so you can hear all the stuff going on in the overdubbing. Ideally, you'll want to grab a remastered version, turn it up and try to figure out all of the instruments...
And here's Bill Medley (left) and Bobby Hatfield lip synching their recording on what appears to be British television...
Next week, pianist Bill Charlap will begin a series of concerts at New York's 92Y that will show off his versatility and depth. Bill will back singers Ernie Andrews and Freddy Cole (July 17), play an evening of Richard Rodgers songs (July 19), duel with fellow pianist Dick Hyman (July 24), play in a funk-gospel hard-bop style for an Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers tribute (July 25) and lead the Count Basie Orchestra (July 26), featuring tenor saxophonist Frank Wess.
But on Wednesday (July 18), Bill will be taking on pianist Bill Evans (Time Remembered: The Music of Bill Evans). He will be joined by his wife, pianist Renee Rosnes (pronounced REEN-ie) and other artists. Bill, like many jazz fans, has long been fascinated by Evans from a musician's perspective. Which means Bill is looking at Evans' works from a technical standpoint, figuring out what makes them tick and giving interpretations his own spin. [Pictured above: Bill Charlap and Renee Rosnes]
During my conversation with Bill earlier this week, we talked about Bill Evans and why the pianist remains both an enigma and a revelation:
JazzWax: Is this the first time that you and Renee have played a Bill Evans tribute together? Bill Charlap: Yes. Both Renee and I will be featured on piano, but there will be other musicians in quartet and quintet ensembles: Steve Nelson on vibes, Greg Gisbert on trumpet, Dave Stryker on guitar, Scott Colley on bass and Joe La Barbera on drums.
JW: Given that the subject is Evans, is there risk of instrumental clutter and overload? BC: I don’t think so. Bill’s music will ring through clearly. The full ensemble will be just a portion of the concert. I’ll be playing solo piano as well as duets with Renee and Scott Colley, and Renee will duet with Dave Stryker. And, of course, Renee and I will both be playing in the trio setting. The major focus will be Bill Evans, the composer, and our interpretations of his original works.
JW: Who is writing the arrangements? BC: Both Renee and I are writing them, and we're playing in all different types of instrumental configurations.
JW: Which Evans’ originals will be performed? BC: We’ll be performing upward of 14 songs, including Waltz for Debby, Very Early, Orbit, Only Child, My Bells, Funkallero, 34 Skidoo, Fun Ride and Your Story.
JW: Is Evans’ music daunting to interpret, given his cult-like status among audiences? BC: To be honest, the romantic view of Bill as a brooding artist is important, but there's so much more. There will certainly be a Bill Evans flavor and mood to what we’re performing, but we’re not attempting to sound exactly like Bill. That would be foolish. We’re interpreting his original music, and hopefully the audience will have a new, spiritual awareness of his compositional skills.
JW: How do you explain the duality of Evans—his musical intensity and his obvious fondness for the common man? BC: Bill reached so far into himself—becoming deeply introspective, if you will—that an opposite outward result occurred. By reaching so deep inside, his music wound up connecting with a wide number of people on a human level. In other words, the music doesn’t end up being introspective at all. Bill always kept his audience in mind, no matter what he played.
JW: From your perspective as a musician, how does Evans’ music fare? BC: Bill’s music is incredibly challenging and technical. Bill’s mind, on an intellectual level, was incredibly deep. As we developed a program for this concert, I found that the strict discipline of playing Bill's music was almost like lifting intellectual weights. It's also full of feeling and spiritually profound.
JW: How so? BC: Bill's process of exploring his art wakes up parts of your mind, and you feel yourself grow artistically stronger. With Bill’s music, you discover as a musician there are things you grapple with as an improviser that are different than with other artists. Bill was so rich and roving, harmonically, that you are pulled-in and you develop new musical and intellectual muscles.
JW: Any revelations? BC: One of the things about Bill that I feel doesn’t get as much focus is that Bill was an incredible linear improviser.
JW: How so? BC: You come to realize that he’s a complete bebop piano player. He’s hard-driving and swinging. Bud Powell, Red Garland, Lennie Tristano and Sonny Clark are all in his playing. You also hear Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in there. He really had a profound grasp of the history of jazz and jazz piano.
JW: In what way? BC: For all of the focus on the introspective side of Evans—which is beautiful and important—he's a bebop player for whom the melodic line is paramount. When you write down solos of major artists, that's their voice, their melodic signature. Bill's harmonic and melodic imprint is singular.
JW: How does this language play out? BC: You hear a cognizance of the jazz piano’s history and of Bill Evans, the composer, which influences everything he plays, whether it’s another composer’s music or he’s improvising a line. Whatever Bill plays is meticulously related to the harmony and bass line and artistic freedom. Horace Silver is the same way. You can always hear Horace Silver, the composer, and how he improvises in everything he plays. Silver was a major composer.
JW: Do you love hearing Evans’ compositions as you’re playing them? BC: Of course. That’s one of the great appeals. For example, on a song like Orbit, it’s not very busy, melodically, but it’s driven by the melody. At the same time, I’m never striving to sound exactly like Bill.
JW: What was the bottom line for Evans as an artist? BC: Tony Bennett told me a story about Bill. Near the end of Bill’s life, he called Tony from the road. He told Tony, “Truth and beauty is all that matter. Truth and beauty.” Somehow, that says it all about Bill. Even when you see Bill play in clips or on DVDs, you immediately recognize his complete devotion to the music. He was always about the music first, not about showing off. All of his efforts were built from the inside out, like Beethoven. It’s not piano music with piano tricks. It’s about the composer speaking, first and foremost.
JW: Were you too young to see Evans live or meet him? BC: Yes. I was 13 when Bill died in 1980. But I had the good fortune to study with Jack Reilly [pictured] in high school. Jack is perhaps the greatest Bill Evans scholar. Jack was able to show me that Bill developed his language meticulously and contrapuntally. He had complete command of what’s possible in modulating sequences, a complete grasp of musical key relationships.
JW: And yet there’s a certain populism about Evans and his work, a common bond with the average person that’s rather surprising given his exalted position in jazz. BC: Yes, I agree. Bill’s music is truly humble. But he also was very clear on his intellectual process and place. When you hear Bill talk about himself, he goes out of his way to tell you he wasn't a natural.
JW: In what way? BC: Bill had to toil really hard to become Bill Evans. His musical language was built with enormous care. He has a complete composer’s language. And yet, despite this language, he always sounds like Bill. Everything with him developed from the inside, from Teddy Wilson and Nat Cole to his connection to the great European classical composers, who were a big part of his world. JW: Which ones? BC: You hear the Impressionists, like Debussy and Ravel, but you also hear the classicism of Brahms. For example, Brahms’ Intermezzo in A Major is a tapestry that’s so tightly wrought and surely had an influence on Bill. As a composer, Bill was such a strong architect [as a composer] that his "buildings" never fall.
JW: What are you six favorite Bill Evans albums? BC: I love them all but, if you’re pinning me down, here goes…
Portrait in Jazz (1959)
Green Dolphin Street (1959)
Interplay (1962)
Alone (1968)
The Tony Bennett/Bill Evans Album (1975) and Together Again (1976)
The Paris Concert, Editions One and Two (1979)
JazzWax notes: For a list of performances next week and to order tickets to 92Y's Jazz in July concert series in New York, go here.
JazzWax tracks: Not long ago, Bill Charlap recorded a superb album with his mom, vocalist Sandy Stewart, called Love Is Here to Stay. You'll find it here.
Few kickoffs by a drummer are as signature as Ed Shaughnessy's start to Johnny's Theme, the Paul Anka song that the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson used each night. As a kid growing up, I associated the sound of Ed's drums at the start of the theme as the official end of a child's day and the start of adult down-time. When that theme came on, the universe shifted and a child was in adult space and on borrowed time. Make a noise, and any hope of lingering could end with a gruff remark demanding that you get into bed.
To this day, whenever I hear Ed's drum intro—which first was a one-measure lead-in and then a crisp downbeat—all I can think of are those metallic-colored curtains, Carson strutting out like a cock-of-the-walk, and adults listening to someone who spoke their language and filled in odd silences with knowing laughs.
In Part 2 of my two-part interview with Ed Shaughnessy, the drummer talks about the singers he's worked with, the sudden death of his close friend Eddie Costa in 1962, and the Tonight Show band...
JazzWax: In 1954, you recorded three tracks with Billie Holiday. Ed Shaughnessy: When I was 23 years old, Columbia Records called and asked me to do a date with Billie for Norman Granz’s Clef Records. The contractor told me I’d be playing with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown and Charlie Shavers. I couldn’t figure out why they wanted me but then I realized it was for my brushes. I was very fast, and Oscar and Ray knew that. We were going to record What a Little Moonlight Can Do, which needed that sound. Oscar and Ray could swing—they were enormously dynamic rhythm players. I remember seeing them follow Maynard Ferguson’s band at Carnegie Hall, and they swung harder than Ferguson’s whole band.
JW: What about Chris Connor? ES: She was an awfully good singer. Chris was very inspiring. She liked me to be spirited behind her on the drums, so there would be life in the rhythm. She’d always go for a new approach on a song and would never play it safe.
JW: And Jackie Paris? ES: He was a very good friend. We hung out a lot together. I don’t think he achieved what he should have. Maybe the time wasn’t right. He could be a little feisty. If some club owner said the wrong thing to him, he’d go off. His voice was very intimate and optimistic. John Pizzarelli reminds me of him.
JW: You were the drummer on Jimmy Smith’s hit, Walk on the Wild Side in 1962. ES: The Walk on the Wild Side arrangements were my favorites by Oliver Nelson. That record was one of the first to cross over from jazz to general listening. A lot of people bought that record. Every time we’d meet, Jimmy would pick me up in the air and say, “Eddie, you gave me my crossover record.” I used African bells at the beginning of the song because it needed something extra. I also played with a lot of drive and jazz on there, a lot of power and energy, goosing the music along with accents and things. Jimmy liked it, but I think he gave me a lot more credit than I deserved. Oliver Nelson deserves much of the credit.
JW: What happened the night Eddie Costa died on July 28, 1962? ES: I was at the Half Note in New York listening to Al Cohn and Zoot Sims. It was raining like all get-out. Eddie [pictured] was there too. We weren’t working. We were listening. Eddie said to me, “I have to go uptown.” I said, “Eddie, it’s raining so hard. Wait until it stops.” Eddie drove a tiny VW Bug. He wouldn’t listen. He said had had to meet someone uptown.
JW: And he left? ES: Yes. I heard later that night that Eddie had skidded on the West Side Highway and his Beetle flipped over. The roof caved in and killed him.
JW: What did you think? ES: I almost went into a spin. I had a record date the next morning but hardly slept. I finally fell asleep at 6 a.m. The record date was at 10 a.m. The contractor knew I was close with Eddie. He came over and got me up and washed and dressed me. Eddie and I were very good friends. I tried to get him not to go. It hurt me a great deal. Eddie was great on vibes and piano, and he was such a funny guy.
JW: You played drums on The Gary McFarland Orchestra with Bill Evans. ES: I didn’t do much on there, frankly. I love that album because of the way it’s conceived. It really sets-off Bill Evans, and he didn’t need a lot of whipped cream.
JW: You also were on The Happiness of Joe Mooney (1963) and The Greatness of Joe Mooney (1963)—two amazing but little-known albums. ES: I think Joe was, without a doubt, one of the most unrecognized music geniuses. He was all taste. Mr. Class. So original and different.
JW: And then there you were on one of Count Basie’s best albums of the 1960s—Basie’s Way, in 1966. ES: That session was one of the joys of my life. Bill [Count Basie] came up to me after the first session and said, “Well, Shaughnessy, you fit the band like a glove.” What I loved about that band was I could play my way—strong and driving but having the good taste to stay out of the way when necessary. The band had taken Chico O’Farrill’s charts on the road and practiced the book for a month. Then I came in for the studio date and played the music cold. That’s what it was all about.
JW: All this time you were in the Tonight Show band? ES: Yes. I joined the band in the late summer of ‘63. The show was based in New York from 1962 to 1972, when Johnny wanted to move the band out to L.A. for four or five years. Out there, he used West Coast musicians, mostly the guy’s in Louie Bellson’s band.
JW: What was wrong with New York? ES: In L.A., the studio could hold 500 people rather than 200 in New York. As popular as Johnny was, he was working out of a converted radio studio at Rockefeller Center.
JW: Why did you move to California with the show? ES: I had two little boys at the time. They were four and six years old. We were able to buy a lovely home in Tarzana with a great big backyard and pool. The kids had a great place to play, and I didn’t have to dig my car out of the snow. But I missed New York. My roots were in New York. In the mid-40s, I played the jazz clubs on 52nd St. That’s where I learned to play.
JW: Did you come up with the drum figure that kicks off Johnny's Theme? ES: The chart called for a one-bar intro from the drummer [recordings of the theme feature two bars, to let Ed stretch]. That way Doc Severinsen could look at me and I’d just kick it off. Later he wanted me to play just a downbeat and not beat-off a rhythm. They wanted it slightly shorter
JW: What’s your favorite album with Severinsen? ES: The last one, Swingin’ the Blues. I played the best on that album that I could possibly play. I was 70 at the time, and everything came off just great. The engineer gave my drums a natural sound. Most engineers muffle it. Doc also gave me two solos, but that’s not why I love the album. The band sounds so great and swings so good. Not that the Basie albums aren’t good or my other four with Doc, like Once More with Feeling, aren’t special. I just love this one.
JW: Johnny Carson loved the drums, didn’t he? ES: Oh yes. Johnny played at home all the time. I helped him set up his drum set. He had played since he was a kid. He was a drummer in high school and a magician. He idolized Buddy Rich. Johnny told me that when he was at home, to unwind, he’d sit with his big headphones and play the drums along to his favorite big band albums. He said, “It relaxes me. I don’t think about the show or anything else.”
JW: Ever take a shot at writing a theme song? ES: I did. I tried to write a theme for The Tonight Show when Jay Leno took over, but it was rejected.
JazzWax pages: Ed Shaughnessy's new memoir, Lucky Drummer, is available as an e-book here.
JazzWax clips: Here's a two-measure intro to Johnny's Theme by Ed Shaughnessy on a Doc Severinsen album...
Drummer Ed Shaughnessy has pretty much seen it all. He played with Charlie Parker and many other beboppers in the late 1940s and early '50s. He was in Charlie Ventura's band at the famed Pasadena Concert in 1949. In the '50s, he recorded with Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Chris Connor, Teddy Charles, Mundell Lowe, Gerry Mulligan and many others. In the '60s, Ed continued to record jazz but led a double life: He was the drummer in the Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson band.
In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Ed, 83, he talks about his early life and how he wound up a drummer:
JazzWax: What was Jersey City, N.J., like in the Depression when you were growing up? Ed Shaughnessy: It was a typical all-white, blue-collar town composed mostly of German, Irish, Polish and Italian families. My dad was a longshoreman who commuted to the docks in Manhattan. He worked the piers in the 20s. I went down with him a few times. His nickname was One-Punch Tom. He never fought a lot, but he was plenty tough. He was a sad story.
JW: Why? ES: He never went past grammar school yet he had the world’s most beautiful penmanship. He had started as a longshoreman and his co-workers voted him to be a delegate to the union, which was a powerful job then. But he drank too much. He was an alcoholic. Eventually, he lost his position. They didn’t want to boot him from his job, so they put him back on the docks. He could have had a wonderful career.
JW: Was he angry at home? ES: No, he wasn’t an angry drunk. He never raised his hand to my mother or me. But he tormented us in other ways.
JW: How so? ES: When he came home loaded every night, he’d drink beer and smoke. I couldn’t sleep because I was always afraid of a fire. I had to put out flames on the armchair two or three times when his cigarette dropped.
JW: What did you do? ES: When I was 15 years old, I told my mother it was either him or me. By doing what he did, he was abusing us. That’s the kind of guy he was. He didn’t even hear you complaining.
JW: Was your mom a homemaker? ES: Yes. But since my father didn’t make all that much money, my mom took on part-time work. Back then, a great many factories hired women two or three days a week to sew clothes on sewing machines.
JW: What happened with your mom and dad? ES: She told him that she couldn’t live like that anymore. He didn’t fight it and left. He found a rented room somewhere, and I never saw him again. Not that I didn’t want to.
JW: Did you try to track him down? ES: I didn’t know where he lived. I wanted to let a little time go by before tracking him down. But when I found out where he was, he had already left the place. I learned that he died some years after that in a veterans’ home in upstate New York.
JW: How did you wind up a drummer? ES: I was always listening to the radio. I delivered papers for money and finally bought a record player. I was in seventh heaven, buying a record a week by Gene Krupa [pictured], Buddy Rich, Count Basie and others. I used to go down in our basement and practice on a muffled set of drums. My dad had brought them home when a guy who had owed him $20 paid him back that way.
JW: Did you study any other instrument? ES: I studied piano. I didn’t hate it but I didn’t love playing and practicing. I was attracted to the drums and started paying attention to drummers.
JW: What was the big turning point for you? ES: Probably the movie, Blues in the Night, in 1941. It’s about a band, and I related to the young drummer, played by Billy Halop. He was a tough little guy, but boy he loved the band. I was a little empty in the emotion department so the movie gave me life.
JW: How did you come to play with Charlie Parker at the Royal Roost in 1949? ES: Actually, I was playing with Charlie Ventura at the time, and Charlie Parker had Max Roach on drums. One night a bunch of us were together and playing, and the jam session was captured on the radio from the Roost.
JW: What was Ventura like? ES: He was a wonderful guy. He was warm and effusive, and when he put his arm around you, man, you felt 10 feet tall. A real confidence-builder. I was a high-energy kind of drummer, and he liked that.
JW: Do you remember the Pasadena Concert in 1949? ES: Do I ever. It was one of great concerts of all time. Back then, Charlie’s band was the hottest jazz attraction in the country. Charlie did nothing but standing-room-only business in theaters and nightclubs. The group was hot. The crowd in Pasadena, Calif., was so geared up. We had never played a concert in the L.A. area before.
JW: How did the audience know about the band? ES: Our records had built our reputation, and Gene Norman, the producer, sold-out the concert fast. Ventura was so innovative. It’s hard to understand this fully now, with everything that came after. But he was. Jackie Cain and Roy Kral deserve a lot of credit for that concert. They sang those wordless vocals, like on Euphoria. It was hip and commercial without being corny. Combine that with Charlie’s gutsy horn playing and those arrangements. We were hot, and the band sounded fresh and new.
JW: What did you think of the recording, which has always been criticized for being a little sketchy? ES: I remember that the engineer got one of the best drum sounds on my drums with just two mikes. It was a completely natural sound. The audience was so excited to get this band in their town. They were flipping-out. They rushed to the edge of the stage. We were big-time popular, in a jazz way.
JW: You worked with Parker and Tony Scott at New York’s Café Society in 1950, yes? ES: Yes. I was playing with Tony, who was a wonderful clarinetist. Parker would come down to play with us four or five times a week. He was a terrific guy. He never seemed stoned. He was always affable and genial.
JW: What was his best piece of advice? ES: He told me to buy Stravinsky records and listen to how he moves the tempo around. And Bird was right. He was always into the craziest stuff. One night he said, “I want to take you uptown to a Hungarian restaurant.” I said, “How’s the food?” He said, “Great, but the Hungarian musicians up there are better than we are.” Bird was a mile wide. He didn’t just listen to jazz. He was a pure intellectual with enormous curiosity.
JW: You played behind Peggy Lee in 1953 and recorded with her. ES: Peggy was a wonderful person. She was warm and loving, but a little fey—in a good sense. She had a slightly spiritual aura about her and liked to give everyone a kiss before shows. You had to be a good sensitive drummer behind her, not a hard-driver. You had to keep the volume down and swing.
JazzWax pages: Ed Shaughnessy's new memoir, Lucky Drummer, is available as an e-book here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Euphoria, with Jackie Cain and Roy Kral. But first, some announcements by Charlie Ventura...
And here's Ed and Buddy Rich in 1978 on the Tonight Show, in one of the great drum battles of all time. You be the judge...
Jazz writer and scholar Ted Gioia makes book-writing look easy, which, of course, makes life a little harder for the rest of us scribes. An insightful, clean writer, Ted tackles tough jazz subjects and develops a narrative that's easy to follow, telling the book's story in a highly informative and engaging style. You probaly know Ted best as the author of West Coast Jazz (1998) and Delta Blues (2009), but he also has written The History of Jazz (1998), The Birth (and Death) of the Cool (2009) and quite a few others.
Ted's latest is The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (Oxford), a handy reference guide to 252 songs and the stories behind them. As with all of Ted's books, this one will surely be on home shelves long after others are gone.
In an interview with Ted, 54, we talked about the criteria for a jazz standard and why so few songs written today fit into this category...
JazzWax: So what’s the difference between a jazz standard and a Great American Songbook standard? Ted Gioia: Songbook standards refer to the best popular songs from the Golden Age of American songwriting, which started in the 1920s and ran out of steam the late 1950s and early 1960s. While many of these songs are jazz standards and are in my book, jazz musicians also draw on other compositions, some of them little-known by the general public. These might include obscure soundtrack themes such as Invitation, traditional pieces like Tiger Rag, or original compositions by jazz artists such as Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis and John Coltrane. No book has covered this core repertoire in its entirety—essentially the songs working jazz musicians need to know and fans ought to learn. I wanted to fill the gap. [Photo above: New York's Tin Pan Alley]
JW: What criteria did you use for the songs in your book? TG: I ended up choosing and writing on 252 compositions. But to decide which ones to include, I started by looking at those that had been recorded most often by jazz players. But I soon realized that many of those pieces have fallen out of favor in recent years. Tunes like The Sheik of Araby and Some of These Days. So I couldn’t rely on a simple numeric ranking based on objective criteria
JW: What did you do? TG: I needed to make some subjective judgments about which songs are cornerstones of the jazz repertoire today. I’m sure there will be debate and controversy about what I included or excluded—those conversations are part of the fun of a project like this. But I expect general agreement about the vast majority of the music discussed in my work.
JW: Some biggies seem to be absent—like Killer Joe, Blues March, Along Came Betty, Hi-Fly, Four and What a Difference a Day Made. Was this a conscious decision? TG: I focused on songs that you're likely to hear today at a jazz club—or might be asked to perform on the bandstand if you are a musician. These aren’t always bestselling jazz songs, or the most popular among fans, or even the most respected by critics. Sometimes a jazz song can earn a gold record, but not be performed frequently enough by later name artists to become a standard.
JW: For example? TG: Songs like The In Crowd, Mercy Mercy Mercy and Cast Your Fate to the Wind. On the other hand, songs such as Lush Life or Blue Bossa might never show up on the Billboard charts but are performed again and again by jazz artists.
JW: What is the newest jazz standard in your book? TG: I haven’t done a chronological sorting, but you raise an important question. I am dismayed at how little the standard repertoire has changed since the 1970s. Some jazz artists today are trying to broaden the standard repertoire—by performing works by Kurt Cobain or Radiohead or Michael Jackson or other more contemporary figures. But none of these newer songs are performed frequently enough to justify inclusion alongside Summertime and I Got Rhythm.
JW: Does this trend worry you? TG: I hope this state of affairs changes. I would welcome a more expansive attitude toward the standard repertoire, and I'd be quite happy to revise my book at some future date because newer songs were getting covered as often as the older tunes. I worry about the stagnation of the repertoire. I even considered including an appendix on songs that should be jazz standards, but aren’t—but that would have opened a different can of worms.
JW: If you were to rank your choices, which would be your list of 10 most potent and influential jazz standards—in order? TG: You could debate this endlessly, but here are 10 milestone works that have continued to provide a benchmark for jazz improvisers over several generations:
I Got Rhythm
Body and Soul
St. Louis Blues
All the Things You Are
Round Midnight
How High the Moon
Caravan
Take the A Train
Star Dust
My Funny Valentine
Yet even here, you can see some changes in attitude over the years.
JW: How so? TG: When I was first learning to play jazz piano, Caravan would not have made the list. It was considered more a bit of musical exoticism than a core standard. But this song is very well suited to the modal phrasing and stylistic preferences of the current day, so it now takes center stage at many gigs. Star Dust, in contrast, might eventually fall off my top-10 list—even though it is one of the most popular jazz songs ever recorded. It doesn’t adapt quite so well to modern conceptions of improvising.
JW: Which jazz standard has the most intriguing back-story? TG: Probably Body and Soul. Today we treat this song as the ultimate sax ballad, the measuring rod by which an improviser is judged. But it almost failed to become a standard. The singer who commissioned it originally never even bothered to record it. The middle section of the song was a reject—turned down by bandleader Guy Lombardo when composer Johnny Green tried to give it to him. The lyricists were unhappy with the words and continued to tinker with them even after the song was copyrighted. Even the name of the tune caused problems.
JW: How so? TG: At the time, NBC refused to announce the title over the airwaves since they deemed the word “body” too explicit. The fact that Body and Soul overcame all these obstacles is largely due to one man—Coleman Hawkins. But even he was surprised when his record became a big hit in 1939. “I don’t understand why or how,” was his later comment.
JW: What is the secret recipe for a timeless jazz standard? TG: Jazz musicians favor songs that are good vehicles for improvisation. Often this is due to an interesting twist in the chord changes or some other factor that the general public probably wouldn’t even notice. Take All the Things You Are, for example. To the average set of ears, the first eight bars of the song sound the same as the next eight bars. But there is actually a modulation that brings the melody down a fourth. This is quite unconventional, and improvisers dig it. But the average listener wouldn’t even hear it.
JW: Why do jazz musicians keep playing it? TG: Shortly before saxophonist Bud Shank [pictured] died in 2009, he told me he still felt he hadn’t yet exhausted all of the possibilities in All the Things You Are. He was 82-years-old at the time and had been playing the song for more than a half-century. For him—and for many jazz musicians—a piece of this sort isn’t just a song. It’s a set of possibilities. It’s an invitation to explore. Those qualities are what establish a song as a jazz standard. Not what the song is, but what it can become in the hands of a creative improviser.
JW: Is this recipe still valid today? TG: Clearly it’s getting harder to apply this recipe. There’s a growing chasm between popular music and the jazz sensibility. The harmonic underpinnings of popular music today are getting simpler and simpler. The melodies are getting squeezed into a narrower range, with fewer chromatic notes and more predictable phrasing. But most jazz musicians want songs that have interesting chord changes or some clever hook in their construction. This divergence makes it difficult for a current-day song to move from the Billboard charts to the jazz bandstand.
JW: But jazz musicians can’t merely play the same standards over and over again. TG: That’s true. Jazz needs to maintain a vibrant dialogue with the popular music of the current day if it hopes to remain vital and not turn into a museum piece. Artists such as Robert Glasper [pictured] and Esperanza Spalding are trying to forge this kind of dialogue, but sometimes it feels as if the jazz side of the equation has been sold out in the process. Even so, efforts of this sort are, I believe, essential for the long-term health of the art form.
JW: Why do these older jazz standards continue to intrigue jazz buyers? TG: The standard jazz repertoire continues to have a large audience in the jazz world and even among aging rock and pop stars. Paul McCartney [pictured] is the latest. And even young pop icons line up to record the old songs alongside Tony Bennett. His last album [Duets II] found him revisiting standards in tandem with Lady Gaga, Carrie Underwood, John Mayer and other performers who aren’t even half his age.
JW: Cabaret is another big market for jazz standards, yes? TG: Absolutely. You also hear them turn up in movie soundtracks, as background to commercials, in video games and other likely and unlikely places. I give many examples in my book.
JW: So, is it still possible to write a jazz standard today? TG: I listen to new music every day and hear many promising songs. But it’s harder than ever for a serious songwriter to navigate through the industry bottlenecks. The music industry seems determined to turn the record business into a fashion and lifestyle category, where songwriting as a professional craft has little or no role.
JW: Are jazz musicians themselves an obstacle? TG: To some extent. Many jazz musicians prefer recording their own original songs and rarely want to feature a song by anyone outside of their band—unless the composer is dead and gone. A few major jazz musicians are bucking this trend, and I applaud them. I just wish more improvisers would follow their lead.
JazzWax pages: You'll find Ted Gioia's The Jazz Standards: A Guide to the Repertoire (Oxford) here. For more on Ted Gioia, go here.
JazzWax tracks: Jim Higgins, book editor of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, assembled a Spotify playlist featuring 2,000 songs that Ted has recommend in his new book. Go 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."
