JazzWax

Interview: Al Stewart (Part 3)

When Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong tried to iron out how their 1953 joint tour would play out, egos clashed and Goodman dropped out. Goodman's decision proved to be a stroke of luck for trumpeter Al Stewart. As the Goodman band without Goodman fell under the direction of a more laid back Gene Krupa, Al found himself developing a bond with Armstrong, a relationship that taught him about music, entertainment and life. [Pictured, counterclockwise from bottom left: Al Stewart, Louis Armstrong, Abbey Hoffer, Sid Harris, Les Baxer and Buzz King at the Paramount Theater in October 1953; photo courtesy of Al Stewart]

Al spent seven weeks on the road with Armstrong and soon discovered that the trumpet great was a pragmatist with a gift for simplifying and enhancing the world around him. Al had always been confident about his own trumpet-playing abilities and style, but after touring with Armstrong and other greats on the tour, he had a new view of himself. By late May 1953 when the tour ended, Al had played shoulder to shoulder with legends and had held his own.

In Part 3 of my interview with Al, the big-band trumpeter talks about spending down time with Louis Armstrong, what Gene Krupa was like as a boss, riding on Armstrong's band bus, and the only time he shouldn't have taken Armstrong's advice:

JazzWax: Benny Goodman's sour interactions with Louis Armstrong are puzzling. What's your assessment?
Al Stewart: I’m not a psychologist. Benny was the King of Swing. No one could touch him. But Louis was the ambassador of jazz to the world. Benny had all the talent to fill that very same role. But he had a different personality. He was a perfectionist and so demanding of himself. He put that feeling on everyone around him. He also was a bit aloof and emotionally sealed off. Louis was the complete opposite. It would have been such a wonderful thing had Benny and Louis gotten along in 1953 and Benny didn't drop out of the tour.

JW: Who handled Benny’s solos when he left?
AS: Georgie Auld [pictured] played them on tenor with the band, and Willie Smith played his solos on alto in the small group. The tour lasted until May 31st, and we ended it in Springfield, Missouri. During that month and a half, we were doing a concert a night on the road.

JW: Did Armstrong's personality change after Goodman left?
AS: The whole tour settled down into a relaxed feel and well-played affair. Everyone loved everyone else. Everyone got along. As soon as Benny was out of the picture, the tension ended.

JW: Did you become friendly with Armstrong?
AS: Yes I got close to Louis. I wanted to hang out with him, being that I was a young trumpet player. I also used to ride with him in his bus and sit with him as much as possible. The two bands had separate buses. Benny had a big Greyhound. Louis had a bus that was just a little bigger than a Flxible. Louis and I got along really well. I loved the man. 

JW: What were your road conversations with Armstrong like?
AS: They were funny. I did a lot of listening. Once I asked Louis if I could blow his horn. He said sure. So I did. It wasn't any better or worse than mine [laughs].

JW: Was Armstrong cool under pressure?
AS: I don't think Louis ever worried about a thing. One night I was riding in his bus. Louis and I were sitting together about halfway back. Standing in the aisle next to us was trumpeter Charlie Shavers [pictured], from Benny's band. He also wanted to ride in Louis' bus. Charlie was staring at the road ahead. Louis had a driver who had taken the governor off the engine, which allowed him to go much faster. He’d pass cars on curves and hills at 70 mph. Charlie was getting really nervous.

JW: Did he say anything to Armstrong?
AS: Yes. Charlie said, “Hey Pops, look at the way this guy’s driving. He's going to kill us.” Louis looked up at Charlie slowly and calmly said, “Sure make your spine tingle, don’t he?” [laughs]. Louis always had the right answer for everything. He could cut right through it all.

JW: Your tour was around the time Louis was writing his autobiography.
AS: That's right. One time we were down in Amarillo, Texas. I was sitting with Louis in the dressing room. Louis was wearing a pair of green boxer shorts and a white kerchief tied back over his head. He had been typing at one of those old metal typewriter tables. We were sitting there talking when Joe Bushkin, who was playing piano in Louis’ band, stuck his head in and shouted, “Hey Pops, what are you doing?” Louis said, “I’m doing my autobiography.” Joe said, “Yeah? You almost done?” Louis says, “I’ve got 600 pages done, and I’m only up to 1929” [laughs].

JW: Did Goodman and Armstrong's bands play together on the tour?
AS: Yes, on one of the numbers. When our part of the concert was completed, Gene [Krupa] and Cozy [Cole, pictured] had a drum battle. When they were done, Louis' band came out playing When the Saints Go Marching In. Then Benny’s band joined in, and we all marched around the stage. It was so exciting. Louis sounded fantastic. Everybody was having a ball. I'll never forget that scene.

JW: Gene Krupa took over the band for Goodman on that tour. Was he a good boss?
AS: A dream. Only once during the time Gene [pictured] took over as straw boss did he feel the guys in the band were getting a little lax. But the way he spoke to us about it tells you a lot about what a leader and people-person this guy was. Gene said, “Guys, let’s not forget that this is Benny's band and that we have to give a big performance every time we get up there." He never had to say another word. Gene had been a bandleader. He knew. He was beautiful.

JW: Sounds like you wished you had played with Krupa's band.
AS: Oh no. But I do regret not going to see him when he was ill just before he died in 1973. I was going to, but I hesitated. Maybe I still felt like a sideman and that I had no place consoling a bandleader like Gene. But I should have made the effort. We got along very nicely on the tour.

JW: Did Armstrong enjoy the tour?
AS: Louis seemed to enjoy every time he picked up the horn to play. And he was around people who loved him on that tour, and he loved them. It was totally different when Benny wasn’t around.

JW: Did Louis pass along any life lesson to you?
AS: His attitude, his enjoyment of playing, his feeling with people. I never forgot all of that throughout my entire career. At the time, I was amazed and grateful that I had the good fortune to be placed in that kind of company. Working with Louis, you couldn't help but come away a better player and a better person. I think I also became more critical of myself and made sure I performed top notch every night of that tour. I didn’t let down at all. [Photo of Louis Armstrong by John Leongard for Life]

JW: What did you call Armstrong?
AS: Everyone called him Pops. But it took me a while to do that. I was just a kid. As I got comfortable, I started calling him Pops on occasion. It felt good and natural. Like belonging to some special club.

JW: Did you see Armstrong after the tour ended?
AS: Yes, several times. Later in 1953, in October, I was playing at New York's Paramount Theater with Les Baxter's band. Louis was the headliner. After the show, Louis and I sat around talking. His suit was sweated through by the end of a performance. We had our trumpets in our laps. I had an old pre-war Besson trumpet at the time.  A lot of guys played that model. It was made in France in the mid-1930s.

JW: How did you come to own it?
AS: I saw it on a club date. I was playing a gold-plated Selmer at the time. It was a beautiful horn. A guy I was working with in the trumpet section on the date was playing a Besson. I asked if I could try it. He said, "Sure." I picked up the horn, popped in my mouthpiece and played it. I loved it and couldn't get its sound out of my head. That night I traded him my gold-plated Selmer for the Besson, which actually looked pretty cruddy. But I loved the sound.

JW: What was wrong with the Besson?
AS: The lacquer had worn off where your left hand grabs the instrument. I didn’t want to fix it up because I was afraid it would change the instrument’s sound. In an effort to prevent the acid on my hands from continuing to eat through the brass, I began painting the worn spots with red nail polish. This way when the polish wore through, I would see the spot and apply more nail polish to prevent my hand from further wearing away the horn.

JW: What did Armstrong think of your Besson when you sat with him at the Paramount?
AS: Louis looked at my horn and made a face. He said to me, “Look at your horn, man.” I looked down and noticed all the red nail polish and the shabby appearance. He said, “You shouldn’t treat your horn like that. Look what good it do for you.” So the next day I ran up to an instrument repair guy in New York and had him fix the dents and silver-plate the horn. When they were finished restoring it, the trumpet looked beautiful.

JW: How did it sound?
AS: A few days later I began to practice on the horn and realized I had ruined a great instrument. I went back to the repair guy and had him strip down the horn. But it remained ruined. So I started playing a Benge horn.

JW: Did you ever tell Armstrong that story?
AS: No. I never would want to make Louis feel sad. Eventually I wound up with a Bach trumpet. Bernie Glow, Marky Markowitz and Mel Davis all played Bach horns. Hey, for all I know Louis may have been trying to tell me to get a new horn rather than restoring the old one [laughs].

Tomorrow, Al talks about a visit to Armstrong's Queens, N.Y., home with trumpet great Bobby Hackett and what he saw on Armstrong's walls and ceiling. Also, Al talks about playing in three of the most dynamic bands of the late 1950s—Dizzy Gillespie's State Department band (1956), Maynard Ferguson's Dream Band (1956) and Johnny Richards' Experiments in Sound band (1958).

JazzWax clip: There are no commercial recordings of the 1953 Benny Goodman-Louis Armstrong tour. But there's a clip of Louis in July 1953. Go here to see Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars playing Struttin' with Some Barbeque. The musicians with Armstrong appear to be Trummy Young (trombone), Bob McCracken (clarinet), Marty Napoleon (piano), Arvell Shaw (bass), and Cozy Cole (drums) with Velma Middleton (the vocalist who's dancing to the music).

Interview: Al Stewart (Part 2)

Trumpeter Al Stewart spent much of 1948 and 1949 touring with Benny Goodman's bebop band. Al was classically trained, and Benny appreciated his hard work and rock solid sound in the trumpet section. But by late 1949, Goodman was fed up with bop. So he folded the band, assembled a quartet and went on a tour of the Philippines. Al moved on and spent the next three years in other major bands. Then in early 1953, Benny asked Al to join an all-star group he was forming that would include Louis Armstrong and other jazz greats. Al said he couldn't believe his eyes when he arrived at New York's Fraternal Clubhouse studio to rehearse in the spring of 1953. [Photo: Al Stewart and Louis Armstrong applying Louis' lip salve during their tour in 1953; courtesy of Al Stewart].

Part of Goodman's motive in 1953 for forming a swing band and uniting with Armstrong was to capitalize on his revived fame. By 1953, the 12-inch LP album that Columbia had released in 1950 of Goodman's famed 1938 Carnegie Hall concert had sold 1 million copies. To commemorate the concert held 15 years earlier, Benny planned a Carnegie Hall concert jointly with Armstrong that would be followed immediately by a tour. Jazz fans who had only heard about the concert had been buying the LP to hear the earlier excitement for themselves and looked forward to live appearances by the two jazz greats.

Buoyed by the album's success, Goodman assembled a crack band featuring Charlie Shavers, Ziggy Elman and Al Stewart(trumpets); Vernon Brown and Rex Peer (trombones); Clint Neagley and Willie Smith (alto saxes); Georgie Auld and Sol Schlinger (tenor saxes); Teddy Wilson (piano); Steve Jordan (guitar); Israel Crosby (bass), and Gene Krupa (drums), with Helen Ward [pictured] on vocals. Louis Armstrong and His All-Stars would be the other featured attraction.

In Part 2 of my interview series with Al, the big band trumpeter talks about his years between Goodman bands, recording with Charlie Parker, Chico O'Farrill and Jerry Wald, touring with Billy May, and an ego-clashing encounter between Goodman and Armstrong early on that poisoned the well for the pending tour:

JazzWax: After Benny folded his bop band, what did you do?
Al Stewart: Around this time, Chico O'Farrill wrotehis Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite for Machito, and he brought me into the band that recorded it with Charlie Parker. Parker was a total phenomenon. He was fantastic, but Parker could also be out. All I can remember from that date is that Parker was standing, and that [trumpeter] Harry “Sweets” Edison was sitting next to me on the band.

JW: You were one of only a handful of jazz artists who could play Latin-jazz comfortably early on.
AS: You had to get used to the rhythms, since they were very different from swing and bebop. Almost the opposite. The Afro-Cuban music revolution hadn't fully taken hold yet, but these guys were the pioneers. Soon after the Charlie Parker session, [Clef Records producer] Norman Granz gave Chico his own date, and Chico [pictured] put together an orchestra to record his Second Afro-Cuban Suite and a whole bunch of originals. Chico was some writer. Very tricky parts. That was like old home week. The trumpet section, in addition to Mario Bauza, included me, Doug Mettome, Jimmy Nottingham and Nick Travis.

JW: In 1952 you recorded with Billy May’s band.
AS: Billy had already had a hit recording for Capitol called Big Band Bash. So Capitol sent the band out on the road from Los Angeles to New York. Conrad Gozzo played lead trumpet and defined what a lead player should be during that period. I got a call from Billy May asking me to cover Goz for seven or eight weeks because he had to complete the Dinah Shore Show on TV. Then he rejoined the band later at the Steel Pier in Atlantic City.

JW: How did you feel?
AS: I flipped. To cover for a player like Goz [pictured]? This guy was a monster. I joined Billy's band in New York. Billy had custom-tailored suits made for all the players. Then we left New York to go out on the road. It was a drinking band more than anything else. When the bus driver would pull up to a light or crossing in the middle of the night, you'd hear all the empty cans and bottles roll forward and backward [laughs]. Billy was a hard drinker and fell out several times on the floor. All those bottles would roll back and forth and hit him whenever the bus stopped and started.

JW: How heavy a drinker was May?
AS: We played at Frank Dailey's Meadowbrook in Cedar Grove, N.J., for a weekend. I was standing at the bar when the bartender handed Billy his tab for two days. It was $109 [$875 in today's dollars]. Imagine how much booze you had to drink to get to that dollar amount.

JW: In 1952 you also were in clarinetist Jerry Wald's band. Was he good?
AS: Yes, but he wasn’t in the same class as Artie Shaw or Benny Goodman. Chris Connor was in Jerry's band at the time. Chris was a good singer, but she didn't hang out much with the band or at Charlie's Tavern. The band had a great trumpet section: Ed Badgley and Al Porcino would switch off, Dick Sherman and me. We recorded three songs with Chris, and they still sound great. [Photo: Jerry Wald's band in early 1953 at the Paramount Theater, courtesy of Al Stewart; click to enlarge]

JW: In 1953, Benny Goodman asked you to join another one of his bands.
AS: Yes, Benny Goodman and Louis Armstrong were going to take both of their bands out on a tour. I knew that it was going to be special. When I showed up to rehearse in New York, here I was in the trumpet section with Ziggy Elman and Charlie Shavers. Plus there was Teddy Wilson, Gene Krupa, Georgie Auld and Willie Smith. I mean, wow. [Photo of Benny Goodman's all-star band during rehearsal in 1953, courtesy of Al Stewart]

JW: Why did Benny choose you?
AS: Benny respected my playing, having been with his bands between 1948 and 1950. Years later I heard that Benny originally called Harry James [pictured] but James wanted $10,000 a week plus a percentage of the gate. So Benny called me—for $350 a week [laughs]. Hey, it was still three times what my father was making at the time.

JW: When did you first meet Louis Armstrong?
AS: We were rehearsing on the first or second day when Louis came by. He said hello to some of the guys who knew him. Everyone knew him, of course, except the younger guys—me, Sol and Rex. Then Louis walked off to the side and sat down.

JW: Did he say hello to Benny?
AS: Benny never seemed to acknowledge Louis from the moment he walked in the door. He had to have seen Louis. Louis had said hello to everyone. Louis was there to set up the songs with Benny. After an hour or two of rehearsing, Benny said, “OK boys, tomorrow morning at Carnegie Hall, 9 o’clock.”

JW: Did he say hi to Louis then?
AS: No. Then slightly audible, Louis said, “Only place I’m gonna be tomorrow morning at 9 o’clock is bed.”

JW: What did Benny say?
AS: Nothing that I recall. The next morning at 9, everyone was there at Carnegie Hall to rehearse except Louis. He walked in around 11. Benny started telling Louis how it would go as though nothing had happened. Benny said, “Then Pops, you’ll come out and play with my band.”

JW: What did Armstrong say?
AS: Louis said, “I ain’t comin’ out with your band.” Benny was taken aback and already getting flustered. He said, “Why? I’ll come out with your band.” Louis said, “I’m not asking you to come out with my band.”

JW: What was Goodman's reaction?
AS: Benny got even more flustered. Finally Benny became exasperated and said, “Jesus Christ, let’s get this goddamn show on the road.” Louis walked over to the trombone riser and sat down with his elbows on his knees and his chin in his hand. Glancing up at Benny, he said, “Man, I been trying to get this show on the road now for two days now. But it seem like some asshole done snuck in here somewhere” [roaring laughter].

JW: What did Goodman say?
AS: Benny didn’t say anything that I can remember.  Benny had this hit record so he couldn't understand why audiences loved Louis more. He knew Louis was great, but he didn't understand his tremendous appeal, especially given how Louis added that entertainment component, which seemed to bother Benny.

JW: How rattled was Goodman?
AS: At one point, after our tune-up concert on April 16, 1953 at the Mosque Theater in Newark, N.J., I saw Benny alone walking around in the theater's rotunda. It was all made of stone. He had a glass of some liquid in his hand. Suddenly he flung the glass against the wall, and the glass shattered all over the place.

JW: The Carnegie Hall concert was the next night. How did it go?
AS: Great. We were there to do a replay of the 1938 Carnegie Hall concert. I got there early. The stage was all set up with the music parts on the stands. When all of the musicians arrived, we were on the bandstand looking things over. Charlie Shavers sat next to Gene Krupa, Ziggy [pictured] sat in the middle, and I sat on Ziggy’s left. 

JW: Which trumpet part were you playing?
AS: Third trumpet. Ziggy was playing first. But Ziggy was a bit out of it. He was a pretty heavy drinker at this point. A short time before the concert started, poor Ziggy knocked his music stand and all the music off the riser and onto the floor. The whole thing came crashing down. Everyone was on edge given Benny's short fuse and the concert.

JW: What did Benny do?
AS: That was the last straw. Benny had had it with Ziggy. With his forefinger, Benny pointed to Ziggy and pointed to my chair, motioning for us to switch positions and parts. That’s the way it was for the rest of the tour. Charlie played the jazz part, I played lead, and Ziggy played the third chair. [Pictured: Benny Goodman and Ziggy Elman]

JW: Was Ziggy angry?
AS: No. It was what it was. But I felt terrible. Here was a guy whose playing I had the utmost respect for during the days when he was with Tommy Dorsey and Benny's bands. I felt sad. Ziggy was a guy who was a marvelous musician and wonderful trumpet player. I had heard he even played baritone saxophone in Tommy’s band for a while until a spot opened for him.

JW: For readers who don’t know, explain the lead trumpet’s role.
AS: The lead trumpet sets the concept. The lead plays the top note of the chord formed by all the trumpets. It’s the one people hear most. So the lead trumpeter is listening to the bottom of the band—the bass and the bottom horns—to set the feel. The third chair plays more of a supporting role, and the second trumpet takes the jazz solos. Every one of those chairs is important.

JW: Did the tour start well?
AS: The next day Benny's band went up to Providence, R.I., with Louis and his All-Stars. But Benny wasn’t with us. I think the newspapers said he had been stricken with a mild heart attack in his hotel room. I had heard he canceled himself out of the tour. Gene Krupa took over and led the band for the rest of the tour through the end of May.

Tomorrow, Al reflects on the Benny Goodman-Louis Armstrong tour (without Goodman), growing friendly with Armstrong, riding in the Armstrong band bus, Charlie Shavers' concerns about the bus driver, the big lesson Armstrong taught Al, and the flawed advice Armstrong gave Al about his horn.

Interview: Al Stewart (Part 1)

You may not recognize Al Stewart's name. But back in the late 1940s and 1950s he was one of the most in-demand East Coast trumpeters in the big-band business. Over the past 55 years, Al has played trumpet along side the biggest names in post-War jazz, including Louis Armstrong, Benny Goodman, Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bobby Hackett, Lee Morgan, Charlie Shavers, Buck Clayton, Conrad Gozzo, Maynard Ferguson, Bernie Glow, Gene Krupa to name just a golden handful. [Photo of Al Stewart, August 2009, by Tandy Stewart]

In the 1940s and 1950s, there was only one type of trumpeter: exceptional. If you weren't great, you quickly found yourself doing something else for a living. As a trumpeter in those days, you had to be a superb player and sight-reader. You also had to have chops that could withstand two or three shows a day, week after week, plus rehearsals. And you had to have a strong stomach for the road, since bands often traveled hundreds of miles in one day, which meant you did your sleeping on the band bus and ate on the fly. Al did it all and saw it all. And played it all.

In Part 1 of my five part series with Al, 82, the big band trumpet great talks about growing up in Brooklyn, working with Louis Prima and Ray McKinley's bands, joining Benny Goodman's bebop band in 1948, and what he observed from the trumpet section:

JazzWax: Did you grow up in New York?
Al Stewart: Yes, in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. My father was a lady’s shoe cutter—meaning he was responsible for the upper parts of shoes. He had brothers who cut soles. Both of my parents came from Russia and Poland. Like all kids then, I grew up listening to the radio.

JW: When did you first pick up a trumpet?
AS: One day in high school, a friend came home with a trumpet mouthpiece. He told me he got it from the assistant principal, who also was the band director. I wanted to get into the band, too. My friend told me to go see Mr. Levy, the assistant principal. My friend said, “He’ll look at your teeth and give you a mouthpiece for the instrument he thinks you should play.”

JW: What did Mr. Levy think?
AS: He looked at my teeth and started to go for a clarinet mouthpiece. I said, “Wait, can’t I play trumpet like my friend?” Mr. Levy looked at me for a second and gave in. He swirled a trumpet mouthpiece with disinfectant and handed it to me. From then I on I knew I’d play the trumpet.

JW: How did you do?
AS: I worked very hard and became good fast. Eventually my mother decided I could use a trumpet of my own. So my father bought me a Wurlitzer trumpet for 10 bucks. I could read music early on. My mother found a teacher who came from Brownsville. He took two buses and a train and walked 20 minutes to get to my house. He came once a week and charged a buck and a half. My mother gave him an apple. Within a short period I was playing first trumpet in the school band and listening to Harry James and Louis Armstrong on live radio broadcasts.

JW: What did you do when you graduated?
AS: I enlisted in the navy and went into the service in 1945. Toward the end of my 16-week basic training, they auditioned me for the Navy School of Music at the Anacostia Naval Receiving Station in Washington, D.C. I was accepted.

JW: How was the school?
AS: I was assigned a teacher, Leo Prager. I loved to practice. Scales, etudes, whatever. Soon I was sent as a single replacement to Admiral Pat Bellinger who had just come back from a tour at sea. I was to join his band—the Air Force Atlantic Fleet Band—in Norfolk, VA. We played officers’ clubs and events on the base.

JW: Who in the band was most helpful to you?
AS: Bill Forest. He already had played with Del Courtney’s band. Bill taught me a lot about phrasing. By listening, you learn.

JW: When were you discharged?
AS: In 1946. I went home to Brooklyn and started hanging out at Charlie’s Tavern in Manhattan. That’s’ where all the musicians hung out. Trumpeters Jimmy Maxwell and Carl Poole told me about trumpeter and teacher Benny Baker. Benny had been Arturo Toscanini’s principal player with the NBC Symphony Orchestra. A lot of my experience came through classical training. That’s what guys studied then.  

JW: But jazz required a different approach.
AS: It sure did. When I looked at a page of music, I taught myself to play the notes as though singing the phrase rather than just blowing into the horn. In 1947, someone in Charlie’s Tavern told me that Louis Prima [pictured] was looking for a trumpet player. So I went over to the Strand Theater and auditioned for Jerry Greco, a trumpet player in the band. He gave me the first trumpet part to Chinatown, My Chinatown. The arrangement had a very involved four-trumpet soli. I read it down flawlessly, and the next thing I knew, I was replacing lead trumpeter Don Rose, who was leaving.

JW: How did your first appearance with Prima feel?
AS: Unbelievable. I remember the first time I was on the  bandstand. The stage rose from the basement to four or five feet above the audience. As we came up, we were playing the band’s flag-waver, Robin Hood, which was a big hit then. The spots were scanning over the band, the audience was screaming, and the instruments were gleaming. It was a very exciting moment for me. [Photo: Louis Prima at the New York's Paramount Theater in early 1948, courtesy of Al Stewart; click to enlarge]

JW: What were you wearing?
AS: Don Rose’s band jacket [laughs]. He must have weighed about 250 pounds and I weighed 156. I just folded up the sleeves to keep them off my hands.

JW: How long were you with Prima?
AS: Nearly a year. At the time, I was rooming with lead alto saxophonist Harvey Nevins. When he left Prima to join drummer Ray McKinley’s band, he brought me over. The trumpets in that band were Nick Travis, Joe Ferrante and me. We played Eddie Sauter’s arrangements, which were more complicated and more exciting than what I had played with Prima. Marcy Lutes was the singer. She used to sing For Heaven’s Sake with Mack’s band. She had a good sound. [Photo of Ray McKinley by William Gottlieb]

JW: How long were you with McKinley?
AS: Only one road tour. In 1948, I joined Benny Goodman. I was one of the last guys to join Benny’s new bebop band. Nick Travis, Doug Mettome, Howie Reich and me were the trumpets. The day I came to audition, Benny called the rehearsal short. He had just heard Stan Hasselgard, his protégée on clarinet, had died in an auto accident. Benny was fairly shaken by that. [Photo, from left: Francis Beecher, Clyde Lombardi, Wardell Gray, Sonny Igoe and Benny Goodman in 1948 at New York's Stork Club]

JW: Was Goodman tough during your stay in this band?
AS: Not so bad. He was probably less tough because we were playing Chico O’Farrill’s arrangements, which were bop charts.

JW: Did Goodman have trouble with them?
AS: Not with the notes but a little with the feel. Benny was Benny. He tried. He gave it his all. And Benny, of course, was beyond a fantastic clarinetist. He had the greatest time and flow. But he didn’t quite capture the bebop nuance or attitude on the instrument. He was tough in that he expected from his players no more than what he expected from himself. Which is an extremely high standard. [Photo of Benny Goodman's band in early 1949 at New York's Paramount Theater, courtesy of Al Stewart; click to enlarge]

JW: Did Goodman get under your skin?
AS: No, he never needled me. He always treated me well. When we went to California, Nick Travis left the band to join Woody Herman’s band, Benny called me in and moved me up to first chair and gave me a nice raise. From then on I played the lead chair.

JW: How was your relationship with Benny?
AS: For whatever reason, Benny liked me. He used to call me “boychick,” which is a Yiddish term that means young boy. We occasionally played duets together from a practice book I had. Benny liked my lead sound. I wasn’t a solo player. I played a couple of short solos on ballads in that band, like Don’t Worry ‘Bout Me and Intermezzo. Like any lead player, I was the guy who had the top notes in arrangements, so my horn stood out and I had to set sound for the section.

JW: On records, O’Farrill’s arrangements sound tough.
AS: They were. Chico traveled with us on the road. He wrote one or two arrangements a week, and we’d rehearse along the way. Benny did have Chico update a few of his standard tunes, like King Porter Stomp. They were the most intricate of his charts, with fast figures. These ensemble things Chico wrote were different than the kinds of swing Benny was used to.

JW: Were you familiar with bebop?
AS: I didn’t have much experience playing bop at this point. Just after I got out of the navy, I used to go to 52nd Street to see Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. But I was still too young to get into the clubs. So I’d have to stand outside, and when the doors opened I’d hear some bars of a bop song. But it wasn’t tough for me to make the switch from swing to bop once I had the feel. [Photo by William Gottlieb]

JW: Was Benny generous?
AS: [Laughs] Sometimes, but that wasn’t one of his big traits. One time when we were at the Riverside Theater in Milwaukee, Benny invited Buddy Greco [pictured] and me in between shows to Mader’s [pictured], a popular German restaurant. When we sat down, Benny ordered a liver steak. When they brought him the plate, the plate was loaded with mashed potatoes and peas. As Benny cut into the steak, he applied too much pressure and the meat slipped. Everything on his plate went flying into his lap [laughs]. He looked like an omelet. He just calmly cleaned himself up.

JW: Who paid?
AS: [Laughs] Benny made us split the bill three ways. Benny always took the bill and figured out who owed what, even though he was loaded. And the bill always wound up being a few pennies in his favor [laughs]. When we got back to the theater for the next show, I took my seat in the trumpet section. When the curtain started to come up, Benny walked out in an old three or four-button double-breasted suit from the 1920s. I looked like it was made before the Charleston. Someone backstage must have loaned it to him. Wardell [Gray] looked over, put his hand over his mouth and started laughing. It was the funniest thing.

JW: What was Wardell Gray like?
AS: Wardell [pictured] was a fantastic player. He was the only black guy in the band, and it must have been hard on him given where we toured. They wouldn’t let him stay in any hotel. In fact, when we played in Columbia, S.C., we were staying at the Wade Hampton Hotel, and Wardell had to stay at a private home. The place we were playing was an arena. At the time, Benny's band traveled with a couple of Katherine Dunham Dancers, Walter Nicks and Frances Taylor, who later was married to Miles Davis. They were modern dancers and both were black.

JW: What happened?
AS: The audience saw a white band with Wardell sitting there in the sax section and the black dancers and went nuts. A riot almost broke out. The band was quickly hustled back to the bus by the police. We didn’t even play the concert.

JW: Was race an issue in the band?
AS: Not at all. As musicians, we didn’t think anything of race. Nor did Benny. Musicians always played together no matter what color. Benny had broken the barrier before and just assumed the race thing wouldn't exist. But these were still tough times down South. I can’t imagine Wardell felt too good about that. Doug Mettome used to stay with Wardell sometimes in the rooming houses so he didn’t feel completely like an outcast.

JW: Did you ever get Benny’s famous glare?
AS: Not me. I think the famous ray thing was a bit overdone by the press and publicists. That blank glare only came when Benny was firing someone. All other times Benny was just in a fog. He lived and breathed music from the moment he got up to the time he went to sleep. Little else registered. Most of the time that ray was really a daze. He was distracted.

JW: For example?
AS: One time we were in Detroit. Benny was staying at the Book Cadillac Hotel [pictured] while the rest of us stayed at the less expensive Detroiter Hotel. Benny called and asked me to come over. When I got to his room, he took out this box of six new custom-made white shirts. Each one cost $75 back then, which was a fortune. He said, “How do you like them?” I was puzzled. I said, “Yeah, Benny, very nice, very nice.” And that was it. There was no other purpose for him calling me over [laughs].

JW: Was Benny oblivious?
AS: No. But he knew he was prone to fogging out, and he liked to snap out of it and catch people goofing off. When we were playing the Hollywood Palladium, Benny left early one night. Naturally the band after the show started cracking up, playing things we wanted to and imitating Benny. Maybe Wardell and Doug Mettome were doing that. What they didn’t realize was that Benny was watching from the back of the ballroom. He told us that later.

JW: How did Goodman treat Wardell Gray?
AS: Benny had huge admiration for Wardell, and he needed him for the bop sound he wanted. Benny liked Wardell so much he gave him a Bundy Selmer clarinet, which was a student model. But something happened.

JW: What do you mean?
AS: Benny had one big scene with Wardell, and I have no idea what it was about. In early 1949, we stopped in Las Vegas to play the Flamingo Hotel for a couple of weeks. Hotels out there had terrible segregation rules, and Wardell had to go through the kitchen to enter the club. One night during this engagement, while Wardell was playing a solo in the spotlight. Benny walked up to him and said, “Get off the bandstand—and leave the clarinet.” This is while Wardell was playing in front of the audience. I have no idea why Benny did that. Benny was moody, Wardell often drank to ease the pain of all that racism, and Benny could be very cold.

JW: How did trumpeter Ziggy Schatz wind up in the band?
AS: When trumpeter Howie Reich left, I moved over to first chair and got trumpeter Ziggy Schatz on the band to replace me.

JW: Schatz was a bit of character wasn’t he?
AS: And how. In August 1949, after Benny took a break and re-formed the band, we played the Cavalier Hotel [pictured] in Virginia Beach, at the Surf Beach Club there. It was a big club on the beach. In those days, when you arrived at a new location, the guys who used drugs all scored on the various things they needed.

JW: In Benny’s band?
AS: Yes. Now in the back row you had Sonny Igoe on drums. Next to Sonny was the trumpet section starting with Doug Mettome in the jazz chair. I was in the lead chair next to Doug, next to me was Johnny Wilson and next to Johnny was Ziggy Schatz. Next to Ziggy on the wall was a big ship’s bell, which was in step with the club's theme. During the set, somebody in the audience requested Mission to Moscow, an old Benny Goodman tune.

JW: Did the band play it?
AS: Well, Benny called it up, but the band had never rehearsed it. And the song had a very difficult sax soli and syncopated things, and brass peck notes here and there. Most of the band at this point was totally out of it, because they had dropped the stuff they scored. Personally I never touched the stuff. It never interested me. So Benny calls off the tune, and we start playing.

JW: How did the band do?
AS: One by one guys start falling out. A couple of saxophones stop playing. A trombone stops. Sonny Igoe stops keeping time. The band falls completely apart.

JW: What did Benny do?
AS: Benny whips around, and he’s the color of a tomato. He’s absolutely enraged. He was about to say something, but then Ziggy stood up. He always wore dark horn-rimmed glasses and had pushed them off to the side of his face, so the left lens covered the right eye. He reached back and grabbed hold of the bell’s rope and pulled it three or four times. It was the loudest gong you ever heard.

JW: What happened next?
AS: Ziggy lost his balance and teetered back against the wall. He quickly steadied himself and said with his pronounced lisp, “We an-ther all re-quethsts.” There was a momentary pause, and the band broke up [laughs]. Ziggy, with that comment, had cut through all of Benny’s rage. The band had been so out of it that the notes ran together. To play those charts, you had to have your wits about you.

JW: What was Benny’s reaction?
AS: He fired the whole band that night. But he hired us back in a week or so. By the end of October 1949, Benny broke up the bebop band for good. Business was down for everyone, even Benny.

Tomorrow, Al talks about a challenging bus ride with bandleader Billy May, joining the Benny Goodman-Louis Armstrong All Stars Tour, Benny's snippy interactions with Louis, why Benny forced Ziggy Elman to give up the first trumpet chair at Carnegie Hall, and the real reason why Benny quit the tour after the Carnegie Hall performance.

JazzWax tracks: Benny Goodman's bebop band of 1948-1949 was an interesting experiment and launched the career of arranger Chico O'Farrill. But by the summer of 1949, Goodman had decided to abandon bop, a difficult fit for the clarinetist. Instead, he had O'Farrill arrange more traditional fare for the band, which stayed together until October 1949. Much of the band's studio output between these two years with Al Stewart can be found on a French Classics CD here.

Some of the band's live radio transcriptions are on the CD Benny's Bop Vol. 1 (Hep Records). You can find it as a download at iTunes or Amazon here. Benny's Bop Vol. 2 is available on the Tokuma Japan label here.

JazzWax clip: To hear what Goodman's bebop band sounded like at the Hollywood Palladium in early 1949 (the clip's title is incorrect), dig this rare live recording of Chico O'Farrill's Undercurrent Blues. Pay particular attention to the trumpet section, which had to carry the bop flavor...

Interview: Don Friedman (Part 2)

Don Friedman was born and raised on the West Coast but in the late 1950s he became one of a handful of California jazz musicians who relocated to the East Coast. When he arrived in New York in 1957, Don found an apartment and roomed with bassist Scott LaFaro, whom he already had known from the West Coast. Don played clubs in the city, and after a few years came to the attention of producer Orrin Keepnews at Riverside Records. Orrin recorded Don on four albums, each a little different stylistically than the next. The last one, Dreams and Explorations, was a free jazz album with guitarist Attila Zoller. The recording became a game-changer for Don, who began incorporating free jazz touches in most of his recordings going forward.

Interestingly, these free jazz touches were almost  self-imposed. Don was aware he was often being compared to Bill Evans [pictured]. So to stand out, he distinguished his style by meshing his European training, bop roots and free-jazz feel. The result is a fascinating combination of a highly skilled pianist in control and, at the same time, wildly adventurous, searching for a new sound.

In Part 2 of my interview with Don, the legendary pianist talks about pianist Bill Evans, LaFaro's affinity for driving fast, the relationship between Evans and LaFaro, recording for Orrin Keepnews, embracing free jazz, and the album he recorded that he favors most:

JazzWax: Did you and Bill ever meet?
Don Friedman: I used to go to the Village Vanguard to hear Bill, [bassist] Scotty [LaFaro, pictured] and [drummer] Paul Motian. Bill was nice guy, very quiet. We didn’t have a lot to say, though. One night I subbed for him. His trio was playing at the Jazz Gallery in the East Village. Scott called me to come in and sub because Bill had gotten sick a couple of nights.

JW: What did you think of Evans?
DF: I admired his playing. He had a great harmonic sense and his voicings were beautiful. But his right-hand lines weren’t that interesting to me.

JW: How is your right hand different?
DF: I stretch the notes. Bill played more within the chords. I find he’s more conservative and I take more chances. But I always loved his chordal stuff. I tried to copy what he was doing there and include it in some of my playing. In fact, I changed some of my playing in my left hand when I first heard him.

JW: How so?
DF: When I started playing, I listened to Bud Powell. He had a root-oriented left hand, using a lot of inversions when voicing chords. Bill was doing things that were completely different, building drama rather than just keeping time.

JW: As someone who has worked with many bassists, what’s your take on LaFaro?
DF: Scotty was able to relate to what I was doing. Many bass players did not listen as carefully as he did. Jazz is ear music—more than any other form. You have to hear what the other players are doing. In most cases you don’t have written notes to play. You just have sounds. If you’re a classical musician, you’re playing notes that were written for you. Of course, you have to listen. But with jazz, you have to hear what you and what other guys are doing. Your ears have to be wide open. I felt that Scott had those kinds of ears, more so than most other bassists. [Photo of Scott LaFaro: (c)Ray Avery/CTSIMAGES.COM]

JW: Do you know anything about LaFaro’s fatal auto accident in upstate New York on July 6, 1961?
DF: Nothing more than what has been written. But having driven many times with Scotty, I know that he liked to put the pedal to the metal. He was young and liked speed, and there were no seat belts back in those days. He had gone to a party up in Geneva, N.Y., and lost control of the car and crashed, killing himself and a friend who was in the car with him. So sad.  [Pictured: LaFaro vehicle after colliding with a tree]

JW: What was Evans’ bond with LaFaro?
DF: Bill was tremendously impressed with Scotty. Bill tended to have a depressed personality. Scotty was the total opposite. He was so full of joie de vivre. He lived life to the hilt. He was Mr. Positive about everything. Scott also knew how to take control of a situation. Since he was a positive person, he had a strong personality. I think Bill felt emotionally dependent on him.

JW: Was LaFaro blunt with Evans?
DF: Scotty had no fear or hesitation to tell Bill that he was a jerk for getting hooked on drugs. They had a lot of fights about that.

JW: Do you miss LaFaro?
DF: When I think about Scotty disappearing so soon, it’s a terrible tragedy. It’s all so long ago. What I wish is that Scott was around today so we could play together now. I feel I’ve come a long way in 50 years, or I’d like to think so [laughs].

JW: How did your first Riverside album, A Day in the City, come about?
DF: I was studying composition around that time. I wanted to learn to compose. One of the class assignments was to write a theme and variations on a folk song. So I did. I composed a piece for piano. Around the same time, I was friends with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Joe Hunt. We used to get together at my apartment to jam. Joe was recording with George Russell at the time and knew producer Orrin Keepnews at Riverside. Joe told Orrin about me. Orrin was looking for a pianist with original material.

JW: How was Orrin to work with?
DF: Orrin [pictured] knew his stuff, but I never felt completely comfortable around him. He wasn’t very encouraging and never really made me feel qualified to be there. But in all fairness, it was probably my own insecurity. Back then, if I didn’t get complete confirmation of my abilities, I felt uncomfortable. He also was a brusque guy, which could be tough. We did make four recordings together, and all received high praise from Down Beat. My relationship with Riverside fizzled when the label started to go under in the mid-1960s.

JW: You recorded free jazz with guitarist Attila Zoller starting in 1964, yes?
DF: Zoller [pictured] was a close friend of mine. We had first met in 1959. We started playing together with Herbie Mann. We started experimenting with free jazz and soon recorded Dreams and Explorations in 1964 for Riverside.

JW: Where did your interest in free jazz come from?
DF: I was very interested in free playing when I studied composition in contemporary classical music. I loved the atonal sounds that I had heard. In free jazz, you can emulate those sounds. You can’t do that when playing chord changes. With free jazz, you don’t have to worry about the key or a steady beat. That’s what drew me to it.

JW: But from the listener’s standpoint, that can sound a little self-centered.
DF: That’s probably true [laughs]. But so is jazz in general for people who don’t know anything about the music. Some free jazz is fascinating, but I’ve heard plenty that’s total garbage.

JW: How would one tell the difference?
DF: [Laughs] Very funny. That’s a good question. If you hear jazz musicians who have a background in traditional jazz play free jazz, you’ll hear that they approach it in a different way. You can hear the difference, just as you can see the difference between someone just throwing paint at a canvas and Jackson Pollock, [pictured] for example. Someone who has studied can’t help but deliver form, content and composition, even in free jazz. Today, I find much of free jazz to be solely percussive.

JW: Looking back, how do you view free jazz now?
DF: It still has a lot of value. The problem for me now is that I don’t have someone I can work with in the free-jazz space. I could get into it again if I had the right person. Attila was really into that. The way we performed the music was free, but we wrote pieces and improvised off of them. We played off of each other. [Pictured: Don Friedman]

JW: What’s your favorite Don Friedman album?
DF: Probably Waltz for Marilyn. I love how it came together.

JW: Looking back on your career, anything you’d do different?
DF: I don’t know. I’ve been tremendously fortunate. I’ve had great experiences and met all kinds of people. I’ve always done something that I love to do, which is play piano and jazz. At this point in my life, in the last several years, I think I’ve been the best I’ve ever been.

JazzWax tracks: Two of my favorite later-period Don Friedman albums are Days of Wine and Roses (1995) and Waltz for Marilyn (2007). Days of Wine and Roses was recorded in Milan, Italy, with Marco Ricci on bass and Giampiero Prima on drums. The CD features one gorgeous standard after the next, including one of the most inventive treatments of Body and Soul. The emphasis is on bop. Waltz for Marilyn is named for the composition Don wrote for his wife. The album features guitarist Peter Bernstein, bassist Martin Wind and drummer Tony Jefferson. Don's piano with a guitar is magic, and this album has touches of his earlier recordings with Zoller.

Days of Wine and Roses is available as a download at Amazon here. Waltz for Marilyn is available as a download at Amazon here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Don playing Bill Evans' Turn Out the Stars in 2003...

 

Interview: Don Friedman (Part 1)

Pianist Don Friedman arrived on the New York scene just as   Bill Evans was making his mark as a solo player. Both were classically trained, both had similar sounds, and both played and recorded with bassist Scott LaFaro. But where Bill was Euro-centric, influenced primarily by George Russell and relatively conservative in his approach, Don was more experimental and had more Bud Powell and Red Garland in his attack. While Don's style and sound was close to Evans', he favored free jazz, which regularly surfaced in his compositions and improvisation.

I've long loved Don's playing because his style is sensitive, swinging and inhibition-free. A few weeks ago I was reminded of just how superb Don was and is when a new CD arrived: Scott LaFaro: Pieces of Jade. The CD from Resonance Records includes five tracks from 1961 featuring Don, bassist LaFaro and drummer Pete LaRoca, as well as an original composition Don recorded in 1985 called Memories for Scotty. For too long now Don has remained off the main jazz radar screen, which needs to change.

In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Don, 74, the legendary pianist talks about his early years on the West Coast, touring with Buddy DeFranco at age 21, why he moved to New York, rooming with LaFaro, how LaFaro's Gloria's Step got its name, and why LaFaro's contribution to trio jazz remains significant:

JazzWax: You were born in San Francisco. Did you grow up there?
Don Friedman: No. When I was 15 years old my family moved to Southern California. Around 1950, my father decided to go into business with his brother-in-law. They opened a grocery in Hollywood. What I loved most about the move down there was the weather [laughs].

JW: Did you continue taking lessons in Los Angeles?
DF: Actually, I stopped playing the piano. I had had one teacher for 10 years, from the time I was four years old, in San Francisco. She was special. When we moved, she recommended someone, but I didn’t like that person.

JW: How did you become fond of jazz?
DF: Both of my parents adored classical music, so that's all I had listened to and played. But in Los Angeles, I met this guy who wanted to be a bass player, and he turned me on to this teenage big band. I became the band's piano player. The band featured a brother and sister whose father was a drummer and wrote note-for-note arrangements of famous big band charts.

JW: What did the girl and boy play?
DF: The girl played the clarinet and the boy played trumpet. One tune was Artie Shaw’s [pictured] Frenesi, and she’d play Shaw’s solo exactly as it was on the record. In Van Nuys, there was a place called The Dry Nightclub. It was a club that showcased teenage bands. We’d play on the weekends. That was my first exposure to jazz.

JW: This would be the early 1950s. Did you listen to West Coast jazz then?
DF: Yes. I also started to go to the Hollywood Palladium where I heard all the great bands. The one that impressed me most was Stan Kenton’s orchestra, with Conte Candoli, Shorty Rogers and Frank Rosolino. In fact, I first saw bassist Scott LaFaro when he came through the Palladium with Buddy Morrow’s band.

JW: When did you first actually meet LaFaro?
DF: We met up at [alto saxophonist] Herb Geller’s house. Herb was a mainstay on the jazz scene in L.A. then and had a nice home with his wife Lorraine in the Hollywood Hills. Guys were always going up there to play, like Scott, alto saxophonist Joe Maini, trumpeter Jack Sheldon and others. Around this time I started going to Los Angeles City College to study music, but I got disgusted and quit.

JW: Your parents didn’t mind?
DF: My parents left me alone when I was 16 or 17 years old. I was an only child, and they were plenty controlling up until then [laughs].

JW: Did you know what you wanted to do, career-wise, by then?
DF: Yes, I was going to be a jazz pianist. I began taking lessons from Sam Sacks, who had taught Hampton Hawes. He taught me chord changes. I also began learning a great deal from records. I had a good ear.

JW: Meaning you could hear something once and play it?
DF: Pretty much. I had studied piano for 10 years and was fairly talented as a classical player. I could always improvise but couldn’t do it in the jazz sense. When I learned the basics, jazz improvisation came easy to me. Considering I had never even heard jazz or knew anything about pop music until I was 16 or 17, I was a quick study. By the time I was 21 years old in 1956, I was touring with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco [pictured].

JW: What was the West Coast jazz scene like when you were playing with artists like Chet Baker, Buddy Collette and others?
DF: The scene was one of the reasons I moved to New York in 1958.

JW: Why?
DF: The scene was too laid back. There was no intensity. In New York there were always guys getting together and going to lofts to play. In Los Angeles, guys would say, “I can’t make the rehearsal or gig today. I’m going to the beach or the pool.”  Even now when I go out there, you sense it’s more laid back. I think it was partly the car culture. Everyone was spread out. In New York, there was always a greater sense of urgency.

JW: When did you move to New York?
DF: When I first came to New York in 1956 with Buddy DeFranco, we were in New York for quite a few months. Then I went back to California in 1957. But later that year I realized I had to move to New York. I had already met a lot of musicians when I played Basin Street and Café Bohemia with Buddy. When I arrived, I worked with bassist Teddy Kotick, who had a steady gig in Staten Island. My big break came a few years later when I was signed to Riverside Records in 1961.

JW: After you arrived in New York in 1957, you shared an apartment with bassist Scott LaFaro.
DF: Yes. Actually, it was my apartment. The guys I had roomed with had moved out. It was on 80th St. and York Ave. Rent was only $18 a month then [laughs]. Scotty was there only for a few months. He soon moved down to the Lower East Side with Gloria, his girlfriend. They never married. Gloria was a lovely girl and a dancer. She and Scotty remained together until his death in early July 1961.

JW: LaFaro’s Gloria’s Step was named for her, yes?
DF: Yes. But the song's name originated because he knew the sound of Gloria's footsteps when she came up the stairs to their apartment, not because she was a dancer. 

JW: Is LaFaro justifiably praised as a revolutionary bass player?
DF: In my opinion, Scotty has never gotten as much credit as he should have. He developed his own way of playing. He practiced 12 hours a day. I never saw anyone work as hard. He didn’t go to a music conservatory to learn correct fingering.

JW: Did he take lessons?
DF: He took some lessons in bowing while growing up in Geneva, N.Y., and studied the clarinet and sax. When he practiced the bass,he used a clarinet book. He developed incredible chops. He was the fastest player I had ever heard. With Bill [Evans] and Paul Motian, he was a solo instrument. They were really the first working trio that got into this with a bass player. [Pictured from left: Scott LaFaro, Bill Evans and Paul Motian]

JW: You recorded just five tracks with Scott in 1961. Do you recall the date?
DF: I don’t. I remember that the three of us—me, Scott and Pete LaRoca—were in a recording studio. I don’t know why. Maybe rehearsing. At any rate, the engineer who was there was the engineer who was at Riverside Records at the time. He liked what we were playing and said, “Why don’t you guys play and I’ll record you.” So we did.

JW: You recorded with LaFaro at the same time as Bill Evans.
DF: Scotty and I used to play together even when he was playing with Bill. He’d sit down at my piano in my apartment and try to write something. When he and Gloria lived on the Lower East Side, we’d hang out. We also worked together with singer Dick Haymes at a club called the Living Room on the East Side. Then we went out on the road with Haymes.

Tomorrow, Don talks about how his style differs from Bill Evans', insights on the LaFaro-Evans relationship, recording A Day in the City, reflections on producer Orrin Keepnews, recording free jazz with guitarist Attila Zoller, and his favorite Don Friedman album.

JazzWax tracks: The newly released Pieces of Jade features five tracks recorded by Don, LaFaro and Pete LaRoca in 1961. They are I Hear a Rhapsody, Don's Sacre Bleu (take 1), Green Dolphin Street, Sacre Bleu (take 2) and Woody 'n' You. These tracks are absolutely superb, with Green Dolphin Street a complete knockout.

A solo work by Don called Memories for Scotty from 1985 also is on this CD. The rest of the CD features a plodding rehearsal by Bill Evans and Scott LaFaro of My Foolish Heart (1960) and an insightful 1966 interview with Evans by George Klabin.

You'll find Pieces of Jade as an iTunes download. Or it's on CD here.

Don's four albums for Riverside Records between 1961 and 1964 also are excellent. They are A Day in the City, Circle Waltz, Flashback and Dreams and Explorations. If you're new to Don, start with Circle Waltz (1962), with bassist Chuck Israels and drummer Pete LaRoca. A Day in the City is a fascinating exploration of straight up jazz and free jazz. It's a classic, and a long-time favorite of mine.

Dreams and Explorations with guitarist Attila Zoller is largely free jazz, but a form that even traditional jazz listeners will find appealing. There are three standards here that have enormous energy, with Don exhibiting his powerful Euro-bop technique. The standards are Israel, Darn That Dream and You Stepped Out of Dream.

Circle Waltz is available on CD here. A Day in the City is available as a download or on CD here.  Dreams and Explorations is available as a download or on CD here. Flashback is available as a download or on CD here.

JazzWax pages: University of North Texas Press has just published Jade Visions: The Life and Music of Scott LaFaro, by Helene LaFaro Fernandez, LaFaro's sister. You'll find it here.

JazzWax clips: Go here and listen to Don with tenor saxophonist Tom Butts, bassist Todd Coolman and drummer Frank Ferreri in 2001 playing Star Eyes. Don is playing a Casio of some kind. Dig him swing this standard inside-out during his solo!

And here's Don with alto saxophonist Charles McPherson playing Everything Happens to Me in 2001...

PhotoStory9: Dizzy Gillespie

In the summer of 1965, Dizzy Gillespie performed at the Newport Jazz Festival and then played a series of club gigs in the Northeast. In August, Gillespie appeared at the Showboat in Washington, D.C. During his engagement, a note was passed to him from a woman in the audience. The note asked if he would consider playing a morning concert at a local public school. The note included the woman's phone number. Never one to shy away from winning young fans, Dizzy agreed and brought his working band to the school. The woman who sent the note was Donna Wilcox, a volunteer and photographer. Here's Donna's story and the photographs she took that day:

"In the summer of 1965 I volunteered at the Bundy School in Washington D.C. [pictured]. The school held a summer program for 6th graders who needed to raise their reading levels before entering the 7th grade. While I was there, I took photographs of the students in classroom settings for a paper the principal was writing to gain funding for the reading program the following summer.

"Toward the end of the August we had a staff meeting to discuss ideas for a closing activity or treat for the students who had stayed with the program and had been successful. My husband John Wilcox was a radio personality at WMAL and had interviewed Dizzy Gillespie several times. The night before, my husband and I had been at the Showboat to hear Dizzy and his group. During the school meeting, I wondered aloud whether Dizzy could be persuaded to perform a short morning concert for the students while he was in town. The staff liked the idea, so I said I'd look into it.

"When my husband and I went to hear Dizzy at the Showboat again that night, I wrote him a note telling him about the school program and asked if he would play a morning concert. I included my phone number. Several nights went by, and I didn't hear from him. But on Sunday, a 4 a.m., my phone rang. When I answered, a gravelly voice said, 'I hope you're still awake.' Then Dizzy identified himself and asked where the school was located.

"I gave him the address for Bundy, and Dizzy said 'Ah, Chocolate Town.' Dizzy said his group would indeed perform at the school that Monday. He gave me the address where bassist Chris White and drummer Rudy Collins were staying so I could pick them up along with their instruments. Dizzy said that he, Kenny Barron and James Moody would find their way to the school and arrive at 10 a.m.

"When I awoke on Sunday, I scrambled to find a van. Then I arranged to have the school piano tuned that afternoon. On Monday morning, I picked up Chris and Rudy. Dizzy and the other musicians arrived right on time. The group set up and started playing at 10:30 a.m. and performed for a generous hour. They were a smash hit with the kids, who came on stage and danced with Dizzy while he played.

"After the concert, the students presented the musicians with a letter of thanks. Then Dizzy came off the stage, and the students gathered around to look close at the famous tilted horn. That's when I took the picture at the top of this page. I took if from the stage with a telephoto lens. I can't remember what kind of camera it was because I had rented it. At the time I had an old Nikon, but I didn't like the flash apparatus it came with. I had used the same camera to take pictures of the kids in the classrooms for the school brochure.

"Dizzy was a most generous, talented, funny man. I will never forget him, his kindness or his music." —Donna Wilcox

Photos by Donna Wilcox. © Donna Wilcox/all rights reserved. Photos used here with the artist's permission.

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 5)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 4)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 3)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Interview: Meredith d'Ambrosio (Pt 2)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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