JazzWax

Tracy, Orson and Sacha

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Tracy Letts for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). Tracy is quite extraordinary. In addition to a prolific acting career (many top films and TV series), he is the author of August: Osage County (2013) and the winner of a Pulitzer Prize and Emmy Award. He was just in HBO's Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty, one of the year's finest streaming series, and his latest play, The Minutes, is on Broadway. [Photo above of Tracy Letts courtesy of Chicago's Steppenwolf Theatre]

To give you a sense of Tracy's acting career, here are a few of his superb performances:

Here's Tracy as Henry Ford II in Ford v Ferrari (2019)...

Here's Tracy as the dad in Lady Bird (2017)...

Here's Tracy in Showtime's Homeland as Senator Andrew Lockhart...

Here's Tracy in HBO's Winning Time as Lakers' coach Jack McKinney...

And here's Tracy in Seinfeld, in the window at "Horsetrack Betting." Move the space bar to 1:32...

Good vibrations. Photo above of legendary vibist and bandleader Terry Gibbs, right, who recently welcomed an old friend, Fresh Sounds owner-producer Jordi Pujol, to his home. They go back many years.

More good vibrations. Vocalist-pianist Meredith d'Ambrosio, left, sent along the above photo of her and pianist, composer, arranger and singer Bob Dorough in the 1980s when they both performed at a jazz festival in Bordeaux, France.

Ray Brown. Last week after my Backgrounder post on the Ray Brown Trio's 1994 album Don't Get Sassy, I heard from Kim Paris of the FM Radio Archive:

Hi Marc, thanks for your JazzWax Backgrounder on the Ray Brown Trio's Don't Get Sassy. For your listening pleasure, I can offer two broadcast recordings on FM Radio Archive featuring Ray Brown.

The first features the same trio—Ray Brown, Benny Green and Jeff Hamilton—at Yoshi's in 1993. Go here.

The second is Ray Brown with the Charlie Parker All Stars, live at the 1980 Chicago Jazz Festival, celebrating what would have been Parker's 60th birthday. Big thanks to Marc Rabin, who shared both recording from his collection. Go here.

Bill Evans. Kim Paris also sent along a 1975 Bill Evans Trio concert from Épalinges, Switzerland, with Eddie Gomez on bass and Eliot Zigmund on drums. The recording is from Swiss public broadcasting network Radio Television Suisse (RTS). Go here. [Photo above of Bill Evans courtesy of Nederlands Instituut voor Beeld en Geluid / Elemental Music]

The Pied Pipers. Jonathan Kahn sent along a link to a recording of the Pied Pipers in 1945 singing In the Middle of May, a nifty tune with the Paul Weston Orchestra. Go here...

Jackie Paris had a big ego, as we know from Raymond De Felitta's documentary Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris. We also know the jazz singer was a handful and, according to subjects interviewed, he "rubbed people the wrong way." Several weeks ago I found the photo above of Paris and then wife and singing partner Anne Marie Moss. Upon looking at the back of the photo, I couldn't help but notice that the photographer or newspaper editor had a comment of his own: "royal pain." (Hard to imagine it says "royal pair.")

Jazz scribes. Pianist Michael Weiss sent along a link to a YouTube clip that features jazz writers-producers Ira Gitler, Dan Morgenstern, Don Schlitten and David Himmelstein on New York's WBAI in 1964. Wow, they sound like kids. Go here...

Orson Welles. Director Raymond De Felitta writes on film at Movie 'Til Dawn and posts podcast interviews that he has conducted with directors here. Last week he alerted me to a cool YouTube interview excerpt that director Orson Welles gave in 1958. Go here...

Nancy Harrow. Want to make a really hip Greenwich Village scene? I mean, like one of those happenings from the early 1960s? If you're in New York, you're in luck. Two plays will feature the music of legendary vocalist Nancy Harrow. The plays are Three Sisters and About Love. Performances will run through June 5 at the Sheen Center on Bleecker and Elizabeth streets. Will Pomerantz adapted About Love from a short story called First Love by Ivan Turgenev, and the adaptation of Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov is also his work. He directs both plays.

Nancy told me that the songs she wrote for Three Sisters are A Storm Is Brewing and Can’t Say Goodbye. These have never been recorded, she said. The other songs that are sung in the production are ones she previously recorded on albums. They will be sung by the actors. In About Love, the music is almost all instrumental except for Happy Days, a song she wrote originally for my Lost Lady album recorded with pianist Dick Katz.

The on-stage quartet for Three Sisters features Misha Josephs on guitar, Frederika Krier on violin, Jared Engel on bass and Steve Picataggio on drums. A trio on stage for About Love is comprised of the same musicians, minus the drums. For more information, go here.

Nancy's latest album is Partners II: I Don’t Know What Kind of Blues I’ve Got compiled during the pandemic. Go here.

Dave Thompson has a little something for you on the piano—Very Early. Go here...

DAVID THOMPSON · Very Early

And finally, here's France's Joëlle (above) and Sacha Distel in the 1970s singing I Can't Live Without You...

Who Was Art Hodes?

Born in 1904 in what today is Ukraine, Art Hodes and his family left the country soon after, likely following a violent wave of attacks against Jewish families in their town. After docking in New York, they settled in Chicago, where a young Hodes began playing blues piano in the city's clubs. When Hodes was 24, in 1938, he moved to New York, where his reputation took off.

Here are a series of Chicago TV shows in 1969 that featured Hodes [pronounced HO-dees] and his band, courtesy of Ian R. Mackenzie, who found the YouTube links:

Here's Part 1 of Hodes on Chicago's public television station...

Here's Part 2...

And here's another, with Bud Freeman on tenor saxophone...

Mini-Doc: Meredith d'Ambrosio, 1988

Meredith d'Ambrosio and I have been pals for nearly 15 years, when I first interviewed her for JazzWax. Truth be told, we go back even further, to the days when I was in Boston at college in the 1970s and she was performing around town. Though we never crossed paths in Boston, sadly, I knew from the moment I heard her voice on It's Your Dance that we must have met. Today, only albums by Meredith and Steely Dan take me back to my college years. But while Steely Dan stirs up memories of campus friends, Meredith reminds me of me, alone, on blustery fall afternoons, my thick pea-coat collar up-turned emerging from the "T" subway in Harvard Square to buy jazz records at the Harvard Coop. [Photo above of Meredith D’Ambrosio at Boston's Scullers in 1996 by Alan Nahigian]

I can't tell you why Meredith's voice is like Proust's madeleines for me. Meredith would tell you it's because we've always known each other. I would tend to agree. For me, hearing Meredith's voice on albums transports me back in time to solitary walks on Boston's Fenway, sitting on a bench along the Charles River, a snowy trek along Charles Street in Beacon Hill, or just staring at the John Hancock Tower, which is best viewed on days when an emotional sky is reflected on the building's highly reflective, massive glass facade. It's something in her voice.

A month or so ago, Meredith sent me a French TV segment on her from 1988 that was taped in Collias, France, after a 1988 performance in Avignon, which also is featured in the video. She asked if I would post it to my YouTube channel so all could enjoy. By the way, if you're in Boston in June, Meredith will be giving a rare vocal performance on Sunday, June 12, at the Zuzu Music Room in Cambridge, Mass., from 7 to 9:30 p.m. She'll be backed only by Chris Taylor on piano. I'm hoping someone will video her and put it up on YouTube. For ticket information, send an email to jaw@jazzboston.org. More info appears on this site here. And don't forget, Meredith has a new album out—Sometime Ago (Sunnyside) here. [Album cover painting above by Meredith d'Ambrosio]

Here's the mini-doc of Meredith in 1988. If someone out there can clean up the image and sound a bit with software, please email me...

To read my 2009 JazzWax interview with Meredith, go here (Remember, this is Part 1 of five parts; the link to subsequent parts can be found by scrolling up above the red date.)