Bob Willoughby, a West Coast photographer whose candid images of celebrities in the 1950s portrayed the thrill and exhaustion of stardom and whose photos of Big Jay McNeely, Chet Baker, Billie Holiday and other jazz musicians captured their profound commitment to the music, died on December 18th of cancer at his home in Vence, France. He was 82.
Bob was a fan of JazzWax and kindly allowed me to use his images of Big Jay McNeely when I interviewed the r&b saxophonist in July. He also let me include his image of Art Pepper when I interviewed Lennie Niehaus in November. Based on my email correspondence with Bob only a month ago, news of his death came as a complete shock.
Like Phil Stern, Sid Avery, Peter Basch, Andre de Dienes and other Hollywood photographers of the 1950s, Bob specialized in humanizing movie stars who most Americans knew only from the roles they played in films. These art photographers, often on assignment for national magazines like Life or hired by the studios for on-location stills, were granted unrestricted back-lot access to their subjects. Movie studios at the time had little choice as they tried to contend with a swell of seedy gossip magazines that featured top stars in cheesy photos and articles with the sordid details of their private lives.
But unlike his peers, who tended to glamorize stars' athletic physiques and natural self-confidence, Bob preferred to wait for brief quiet moments. In photo after photo, Bob treated his subjects like exotic birds at momentary rest on tree limbs just prior to flight. With Bob's images, you first saw a star's iconic face. But the longer you studied the photo and the subject's eyes, the more you saw what Bob glimpsed—the underlying strain and fatigue of living in a fishbowl. Bob's Kim Novak at right is regal but defensive. Humphrey Bogart above is ruggedly handsome but strangely vulnerable. His Marilyn Monroe is less sex kitten and more scaredy cat.
With his images of jazz musicians, Bob managed to tease out aspects that were unique to the art form: their ambition and yearning, the unflinching devotion to the music, and that lost look musicians exhibit while performing. For example, Chet Baker is viewed sitting on a folding chair, his chiseled face impassive. Billie Holiday is caught mid-story. June Christy is leaning forward zealously and in line with the piano's lid arm. And the faces of Jack Teagarden, Louis Armstrong and Pee Wee Russell are lost in another world.
But perhaps the photos that best crystallize Bob's fascination with charisma and starpower are his images of Big Jay McNeely performing in 1951 at the Olympic Auditorium, a Los Angeles fight arena. These photos captured a sea change in the culture, depicting r&b not only as music wildly popular with teens but also as an elixir with the potential to erase racial differences. These images remain among Bob's most exciting works.
Yesterday I called Big Jay to talk about Bob and those images:
"I know those pictures well, but I can't recall details about Bob taking them. It's too long ago, and there were so many concerts in those days. The first time I saw those pictures was in 1952, in an annual yearbook of events from the previous year. Three of those pictures were in the book. When I saw them, I couldn't believe it. I always put my heart into everything I played but I didn't know how I looked doing it until I saw those photos. They were so strong they stuck with me all my life. Whenever people think of me, they think of the photos Bob took.
"What's most exciting about them is how the kids were responding to me. I was putting my whole soul into that music, to create something to entertain the people. I was giving myself to the audience. Those photos are showing my hospitality. What you see is that the audience was in charge. As a performer, you gave them what they wanted. You had to. When I see those pictures now, I can still hear the music we were playing that night. You can see in the pictures that Bob understood what was happening. He was right there, in the middle of all that excitement."
Two days ago I touched on Coleman Hawkins Meets the Big Sax Section from 1958, on which the tenor saxophonist was teamed with Count Basie's reeds and Billy VerPlanck's charts. In 1960, Nat Adderley [pictured] had a similar encounter, but with a different set of sax giants. On That's Right! Nat Adderley and the Big Sax Section (Riverside), the trumpeter was backed by five dynamic players—Cannonball Adderley (alto sax), Yusef Lateef (tenor sax, flute and oboe), Jimmy Heath and Charlie Rouse (tenor saxes), and Tate Houston (baritone sax). When combined, these musicians had a robust sound that was both tough and pretty.
What's more, six of the eight tracks were arranged by Jimmy Heath, whose reed writing here is spectacular. Yesterday I spoke with Jimmy about the album, which he says remains among his favorite recordings. More with Jimmy in a moment.
When That's Right! was recorded in August 1960, Adderley had already established himself as a leader and was a member of the thriving Cannonball Adderley Quintet. Several months earlier in October 1959, the group had recorded The Cannonball Adderley Quintet in San Francisco, its breakout soul-jazz album. Nat's leadership dates Much Brass (March 1959) and Work Song (January 1960) were receiving critical acclaim when That's Right! was recorded.
Riverside producer Orrin Keepnews wrote about Nat in The View From Within—Jazz Writings 1948-1987, Orrin's 1988 collection of jazz essays:
"Probably one of the elements that kept the [Adderley] brothers functioning so well together was that they kept a pretty large degree of separateness in their recording careers. Most of Cannon's nonworking-group albums did not include Nat; and only on special occasions was Julian allowed to take part in one of the younger Adderley's studio concoctions.
"When Nat and I got around to the idea of backing him up with just a full saxophone section, it would have been carrying things a bit too far to use someone else on lead alto. So Cannon [pictured] was permitted to play, but it remained important not to let the record seem in any way to be leaning on big (and by now big-selling) brother. So you'll find exactly one alto solo on the album that we called That's Right!"
Supporting the reeds was a highly flexible rhythm section of Wynton Kelly (piano), Jim Hall (guitar), Sam Jones (bass) and Jimmy Cobb (drums). The challenge on an album like this is for the arranger to write so the reeds function as a single-sound unit that also competes ambitiously with the lead soloist, in this case Nat Adderley. The result by Jimmy Heath was a joyous work of bold strokes and a hot core.
The album opens with The Old Country, a Nat Adderley original based on an Israeli folk tune. It showcases the big bark of the reeds and Lateef on flute. Chordnation by Jimmy Heath kicks off with a hard bop line and upbeat Dameron harmonies. There are two standards—The Folks Who Live on the Hill and You Leave Me Breathless. The latter tune, taken at a medium tempo, is the one on which Cannonball has his lone solo. It's a beaut, especially with Kelly's comping behind Cannonball and Jimmy Cobb's [pictured] tumbling dice of snare and cymbal figures.
But the runaway highpoints of the album are Jimmy Heath's arrangements for two Barry Harris compositions—Tadd and E.S.P. Jimmy gives both a swinging Dameron feel, with an emphasis on the bop side. Dig Jimmy's playful fanfare opening! And catch Jim Hall's delicate Wes Montgomery-like comping and solo on Tadd. The remaining two tracks, Night After Night and That's Right! were arranged by Norman Simmons and Jimmy Jones, respectively.
I spoke to Jimmy Heath yesterday about the album:
"Man, that was a beautiful session. The sax section was big but it was Cannonball's lead alto that gave the group its beautiful sound. You also had Tate on the bottom with that big anchor. And the three tenors voiced in the middle was unusual for a sax section.
"The thing is at that time, I was like the house arranger for Riverside. I did a lot of records for the label leading up to Nat's album. In 1959 there was Blue Mitchell's Blue Soul, my album The Thumper, Sam Jones' The Soul Society, and my big band album Really Big!
"When I was writing for the saxes on That's Right!, I knew how each one of those guys sounded as players, and I knew their individual personalities. All of those things were on my mind when voicing the section. We were all friends. Each player—Cannonball, Rouse, Brother Yusef [pictured], me and Tate—we all had a big sound but also a sensitive side.
"Tadd [Dameron] was one of my favorite composers and arrangers back in the day, and [tenor saxophonist] Benny Golson and I learned a lot from him. He was the most romantic writer from the bebop generation. Tadd and Kenny Dorham, especially on ballads and love songs.
"If I recall, Nat chose the songs for the session. I remember there was a special camaraderie there that day, plus all of the guys were talented musicians. And that rhythm section was something. We were all part of the Riverside family and played together on different dates.
"What was beautiful is that Nat gave me complete freedom to write as I chose. As I recall, it wasn't a very long session. We did so many dates back then, they all had to happen pretty fast. When I think back to it, what stands out was how marvelous Cannonball was. He knew how to sing on that instrument. He was from the Benny Carter school of the singing alto, which is why you hear him on top the entire time. He's really on it.
"What's important to me most of all is that I still listen to That's Right! and it continues to give me great pleasure. That's saying something. Many times when you hear something you've recorded, you wish you had done better or had changed this or that. But when I listen to that album, I wouldn't change a thing. I'm really proud of it."
JazzWax tracks:That's Right! Nat Adderley and the Big Sax Section is available as a download at Amazon here—or at Concord here, where it's a buck cheaper.
JazzWax clip: Here's Nat in 1955 playing I Married an Angel, from That's Nat (Savoy), with Jerome Richardson on tenor sax, Hank Jones on piano, Wendell Marshall on bass and Kenny Clarke on drums...
I met Brazilian vocalist Ithamara Koorax for the first time a year ago in New York at an amazing holiday party on Sutton Place. Jazz writer Ira Gitler introduced us. Ithamara was in town briefly to sing and had postponed her flight by a day just to make the soiree, which was softly lit and jammed with jazz legends. Singers Helen Merrill and Annie Ross were there. So were Joe Wilder, Teddy Charles, George Wein and about 50 other jazz luminaries. Ithamara was as lovely and as outgoing as her voice is on recordings, and what you see on stage is what you get when you have an animated conversation with her. Ithamara's latest CD, Bim Bom: The Complete Joao Gilberto Songbook, typifies her grace. The CD is an exuberant tribute to the bossa nova and the beat's low-key, unassuming inventor.
In Part 2 of my interview with Ithamara, the singer talks about recording on Bim Bom with guitarist Juarez Moreira, what she discovered about Gilberto's melody lines, recording with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfa, and why all of her proceeds from Bim Bom are being donated to the Dizzy Gillespie Fund:
JazzWax: You enjoy the sound of the acoustic guitar, don’t you? Ithamara Koorax: I do. I should have learned to play it, but I only studied classical piano. I feel fortunate for having had the chance to play with so many great guitarists. After I played with Luiz Bonfa and Larry Coryell on Almost in Love in 1995 and 1996, I invited Jay Berliner to record on my Serenade in Blue album. I grew up listening to his albums with Charles Mingus, Milt Jackson and George Benson. Then, John McLaughlin recorded with me as a guest artist on Love Dance. Now I'm working with Juarez Moreira.
JW: How did you and guitarist Moreira work together on your new album? IK: We did the recordings in three days. Juarez lives in Belo Horizonte and I live about 270 miles away in Rio de Janeiro. So I sent him sheet music of the songs and a CD with a few tracks of Gilberto songs that weren’t familiar to him.
JW: Did you record together in the same studio? IK: Yes, yes. When I booked the studio, Juarez came to Rio, and on the first day we rehearsed for six hours. Then we did two six-hour studio sessions for two consecutive days. All of the tracks were recorded face to face in the studio, and most of the songs were first takes.
JW: No overdubbing? IK: I don't like to overdub vocals unless I'm doing electronic projects and working with programming and sequencers, which was not the case here, of course. So what I sang with Juarez is what you hear on the album. On a few tracks, Juarez felt he should add a second guitar for the solos, to not lose the groove of the rhythm guitar.
JW: What input did arranger and your long-time producer Arnaldo DeSouteiro have on the album? IK: As usual, Arnaldo was essential. He suggested tempos, helped us find the best keys, prepared the basic arrangements and then asked Juarez and me for suggestions. He kept us focused on the spontaneity and asked us to not over-rehearse or lose the creative vibe. [Photo: Ithamara, Luiz Bonfa and Arnaldo DeSouteiro]
JW: How did Arnaldo work with Juarez? IK: Arnaldo knows how to create and sustain a happy mood in the studio. At the same time Arnaldo also is a perfectionist, which is why he has worked with so many great artists, including Joao Gilberto [pictured]. In just a couple of hours, it seemed as though Juarez and I had been friends for decades. Arnaldo also interacted a lot with engineer Geraldo Brandao, who already knew how Arnaldo wanted my voice to sound. Everything clicked, and the bonding made the mix sessions easy and joyful.
JW: What did you discover about Gilberto's music that may come as a shock to some readers? IK: What I discovered is that Gilberto’s music was much more difficult to sing than I imagined. As a singer you have to deal with so many things at the same time with Gilberto’s [pictured] songs. You need to be subtle, you need to sing softly, but you also need to deal with rhythm—all at once. And it all happens so quickly that you can't think about it. You only need to do it.
JW: You worked with Antonio Carlos Jobim. What was he like in the studio? IK: Jobim was very important to my career because he gave me a great deal of support in my early years. For my first album, Ao Vivo (JVC) in 1993, I included four or five Jobim songs. After his sister Helena Jobim, a poet, gave him a copy of my CD, he called to congratulate me. He said, "Next time, please invite me." So in 1994 when I started working on my second CD, Red River (Paddle Wheel), I selected three Jobim songs and took him up on his kind offer.
JW: What did he say? IK: His only request was, "Please book a studio with a good Steinway!" Actually, we did only one session together, in October 1994. Those were some of the most special six hours I have ever experienced in my life. He was very kind and was telling jokes the entire time. I felt he was trying to make me feel relaxed. Then, out of the blue, he suggested that we do a song titled All That's Left Is to Say Goodbye, which isn’t among his most famous songs. He said it was special to him, because he had recorded it with Astrud Gilberto on The Astrud Gilberto Album, her debut album in 1965. This was such a compliment. [Pictured: Ithamara and Antonio Carlos Jobim]
JW: Did you know the song? IK: Yes, but I wasn't intimately familiar with Astrud's version at the time, even though I owned a copy of the album. I loved the version that Swedish singer Monica Zetterlund made of the song during her live recording with Bill Evans after their famous studio date in 1975. [The song is called Samba in discographies.]
JW: What happened next? IK: We clicked. After we recorded All That's Left Is to Say Goodbye, we had lunch. Then we recorded two more songs. But Jobim wasn't totally satisfied with his performance. He said, "I need to go to New York next week, but we'll record again as soon as I come back to Rio". I was thrilled. One of the songs was titled Absolut Lee, and I started to study it. But he died in New York in a hospital after complications from surgery to remove a tumor. Nobody knew he had cancer, so Brazil was in a state of shock when he died.
JW: How did you feel? IK: I felt devastated and decided to include only All That's Left Is to Say Goodbye on my album. The other songs I recorded with Jobim remain unreleased. I added other Jobim songs to the play list: Correnteza, a song Jobim co-wrote with Luiz Bonfa, who came in to play guitar on the track, and Zingaro, which I recorded with bassist Ron Carter [pictured].
JW: How did Luiz Bonfa differ from Jobim? IK: Both had what I call "sophisticated souls." Both were gentlemen and geniuses. They worked together often in the 1950s and 1960s in Brazil, and both performed at the famous Bossa Nova at Carnegie Hall concert in 1962. Soon after both were signed to Verve by producer Creed Taylor.
JW: You recorded an entire album with Bonfa, yes? IK: Yes. Almost In Love: Ithamara Koorax Sings the Luiz Bonfa Songbook (Paddle Wheel), which was a Top 15 album on the Japanese charts. The title track is a lush bossa nova that Bonfa wrote for Elvis Presley, who had a Billboard Top Pop chart hit with it. I was fortunate to record once again with Ron Carter as well as with Sadao Watanabe and Larry Coryell on that album.
JW: What was Bonfa like? IK: Bonfa and I were neighbors for 10 years in Rio. We used to meet at least twice a week, sometimes just to chat. There were times when he would pick up his guitar as soon as I arrived at his home to show me new tunes he was working on. He wrote a couple of songs especially for me, which was a huge honor, especially because he was so reclusive, like Joao Gilberto.
JW: Did you perform in concert together? IK: Bonfa loved to appear by surprise at my concerts, bringing his guitar and offering to sit in. The first time he did that, he entered the backstage, asking from the wings: "Don't you want to hire a guitarist for this band?" The musicians who played with me at the time recognized him instantly, of course, and were blown away. They felt so intimidated by his presence that they feared performing without a rehearsal. Bonfa was like a god to them. [Photo: Luiz Bonfa, Ithamara and John McLaughlin]
JW: What did you do? IK: I started that concert by going off-stage and taking Bonfa on stage by the hand. As I led him out, I said to the audience, "We have a very special guest tonight, and he will start the show playing his song Manha de Carnaval from the movie Black Orpheus. When the audience realized Bonfa was there, they started to scream. He played superbly, of course, and we got a standing ovation on the first song! I'll never forget that night.
JW: You do quite a bit of touring. IK: I'm just back from my third European tour this year. I performed at 47 concerts overseas in 2009, for a total of 82 concerts if you include my gigs in Brazil. My goal is to sing all over the world, I want to conquer new audiences all the time. That's why I do concerts for 1,500 people in Finland and 4,000 people in open-air jazz festivals in Korea. Last month I performed for the first time at jazz festivals in cities where I had never been before like Belgrade, Indija and Sofia, and people loved my music.
JW: I hear that the proceeds from Bim Bom are going to charity? IK: Yes. I'm always involved in charities and benefit projects. I'm donating all of my revenue from Bim Bom's sales to the Dizzy Gillespie Memorial Fund of the Englewood Hospital and Medical Center in Englewood, N.J. I sing to give love to the people and receive love back. God gave me a gift. I can't disappoint Him.
JazzWax tracks: Ithamara Koorax's Bim Bom: The Complete Joao Gilberto Songbook features 11 songs composed by the creator of the bossa nova beat. Gilberto wrote only 11 songs that he and others have recorded. Joining Ithamara is acoustic guitarist Juarez Moreira. The liner notes are by Ira Gitler. Bim Bom is available at iTunes and at Amazon here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Ithamara and Bernard Fines singing the theme from A Man and A Woman in 2007...
In 1958, the bossa nova began to expand beyond Brazil and attract international attention, particularly in the U.S. While jazz artists here began adapting the Brazilian folk beat in the 1950s and early 1960s, the bossa nova didn't become a bona fide sensation until the release of Getz/Gilberto in 1964. On that album, Stan Getz was joined by two bossa nova stars, pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim and guitarist Joao Gilberto. Today, of the pair, only Gilberto survives. So last year, when Brazilian singer Ithamara Koorax was contemplating her next CD, she decided to pay tribute to Gilberto, whose debut album was released in 1959.
Bim Bom: The Complete Joao Gilberto Songbook is Ithamara's 11th solo release and the result of her life-long affection for the composer's hushed melodies and beat. If you're unfamiliar with Ithamara, she is a throwback to the days of graceful and poised Brazilian singers, when conveying passion and vulnerability mattered most of all. Ithamara's voice has the girlish breathlessness of early bossa nova singers but also the brash confidence and stamina that today's modern vocal style demands.
In Part 1 of my two-part interview with Ithamara, 44, the Brazilian singer talks about Joao Gilberto's importance, why the guitarist did not record on her tribute album, why she chose to record with guitarist Juarez Moreira, and the process she uses to learn songs before singing them:
JazzWax: Why did you decide to record an album of Joao Gilberto’s compositions? Ithamara Koorax: Guitarist Joao Gilberto [pictured] is the most important living legend on the Brazilian music scene. Along with pianist Joao Donato, he’s the last living genius of the bossa nova era. So, after recording with Antonio Carlos Jobim, Luiz Bonfá, Dom Um Romao and Joao Donato, I felt it was only natural that I turn to Gilberto in terms of a tribute album. I grew up listening to Gilberto's recordings, including the album Canção do Amor Demais by singer Elizete Cardoso. The 1958 LP featured the single Chega de Saudade, now known as No More Blues. Gilberto played the new rhythmic beat behind her, and the single is considered the first pure bossa nova recording.
JW: Why is Gilberto called the “Bossa Nova Pope?" IK: Because he was the one who invented the style. Of course there were others who inspired him, like Luiz Bonfa and Garoto, another great guitarist who is still little known outside Brazil. But Gilberto [pictured] was the one who developed the bossa nova beat on the guitar. My producer Arnaldo DeSouteiro played me a few Joao Donato recordings from the mid-50s on which you can hear a very similar beat played by the pianist on the accordion. Nevertheless, Gilberto was the one who mixed all the elements together—the rhythmic guitar beat, the soft singing style and the complex harmonies. It’s that mix that became known as the bossa nova.
JW: How does Gilberto differ from other great Brazilian composers? IK: I don't feel I'm able to translate his whole creative concept into words. But it's something magical that transcends music. The way his harmonies move and the way he develops his harmonic changes—they remain unmatched.
JW: And yet you covered all of his compositions in your new CD. IK: Yes, Gilberto wrote only 11 songs—at least the only compositions that he and other artists have recorded. I decided to put all of them together on one CD. Of course I know that Gilberto has created some other pieces, some pretty tunes that he calls “guitar miniatures.” But he says they are "unfinished business" and would never allow me or anyone else to record them. He is an obsessive perfectionist, and he considers such unrecorded songs as mere sketches, not finished songs.
JW: Why do you think Gilberto hasn’t recorded more of his own compositions? IK: Gilberto is such a creative interpreter that he winds up becoming an unofficial "co-author" of any song he chooses to sing and record. He says that's the reason he never felt compelled to write hundreds of songs. He has always said he knows hundreds of great songs that already exist that he’s satisfied trying to improve or re-do in his own style. [Pictured: Gilberto with his then wife Astrud Gilberto]
JW: For example? IK: Look what he did with Estate, an Italian pop song recorded by Bruno Martino in 1960. Before Gilberto's interpretation of the song on his album Amoroso in 1977, nobody knew the song in the U.S. The song wasn’t even popular in Italy, where it originated. Joao turned it into a universal jazz standard. Which is proof that he performs musical miracles [laughs].
JW: What’s the origin of Gilberto's song Bim Bom, the title track of your new album? IK: The song was first recorded in 1958 as the B-side of a 78-rpm single that featured Antonio Carlos Jobim's Chega de Saudade (also now known as No More Blues) on the A-side. Chega de Saudade was a hit and remains beautiful. But Bim Bom was much more intriguing and modern, and ahead of its time. At the time, most people other than musicians didn’t pay much attention to it. They couldn't understand such a strange song. Another wonderful tune by Gilberto, Voce Esteve Com Meu Bem, was composed in 1953 and still sounds unbelievably modern.
JW: Did you use song sheets or other artists' recordings to learn the melodies for your new album? IK: For half of the material I turned to Claus Ogerman's piano parts from a recording Joao Donato made with Claus in 1965 called The New Sound of Brazil. The songs, Forgotten Places and Glass Beads were co-written by Gilberto and Donato specifically for that album. So I made copies of the lead sheets and gave them to the great Brazilian guitarist Juarez Moreira, who adapted them for voice and guitar on Bim Bom.
JW: When did you and guitarist Moreira meet? IK: We met a few years ago. In addition to being a fantastic musician, Juarez also is a huge fan of Gilberto. He told me he grew up listening to his father's Gilberto recordings. He learned most of them by ear when he was in his teens.
JW: You've sung a few of Gilberto’s songs before. IK: Oh, yes, of course. I sang Ho-Ba-La-La on my debut gig as a professional singer in January 1990 at a place called Rio Jazz Club. Since then it has become part of my repertoire in performances. But I had never recorded it before. As for Minha Saudade, I’ve recorded it on two different albums that were popular in Japan and in Europe. One is Wave 2001, an acid-jazz session recorded in Tokyo in 1996, and the other is Bossa Nova Meets Drum 'n' Bass, an electronic project for the jazz dance-floor market recorded in New York in 1998. But both sound very different from my new acoustic reading.
JW: Your singing approach on Gilberto’s songs is mostly wordless. Is that because his songs don't have lyrics? IK: Yes, exactly. But some of them, like Undiu appear as though they have lyrics because of the movement of the sounds. I repeat the same word Undiu throughout the track, and each time the word sounds different. Take a listen and I'm sure you'll hear what I mean. I felt in a kind of hypnotic trance while recording that tune. There's a very special and strong energy there, a very subtle Eastern influence.
JW: Was there ever a plan to invite Gilberto to record this tribute album with you? IK: I can't deny that I dreamed of recording with him, although not specifically on this album. My producer Arnaldo DeSouteiro [pictured] has been friends with Gilberto for about 30 years. They have worked together on various projects. But I never wanted to take advantage of their professional relationship. Then when I met Juarez, I felt that diving into Gilbert’s songbook with a guitarist as sensitive as Juarez would be fun and challenging.
JW: Is Gilberto intimidating? IK: He doesn't like to do collaborations. Most of his recent albums are solo projects. He currently performs only solo concerts. Even on his albums Amoroso [1977], Brazil [1980] and João [1991], which were orchestrated respectively by Claus Ogerman, Johnny Mandel and Clare Fischer, Gilberto recorded his guitar and vocal tracks alone. Then the tapes were sent to the arrangers who added the rhythm sections and later overdubbed the orchestral parts.
JW: Gilberto is quite a mysterious personality. IK: I know some of the guys who recorded on all of these album projects, and they said it was bizarre and frustrating that they never had an opportunity to meet Gilberto in person, not even at the studio. That's how Gilberto likes to work, which is very different from the way I like to interact with the musicians on my recording dates.
JW: What did Gilberto say when you told him you were going to sing his songs on a tribute album? IK: Oh, it's a secret [laughs].
JW: Come on! IK: If you knew Gilberto, you would understand. He's highly eccentric and one of the most exotic, shy and low-profile musicians ever. He even refused to perform on his daughter Bebel’s albums.
JW: Really? IK: Decades ago, when Bebel was a child, he sometimes invited her to perform with him during his concerts. But after she started a solo career, it never happened again, and he never recorded on any of her albums.
JW: So what was his reaction to your project? IK: When Arnaldo told him that we were planning to record the album, Arnaldo said Gilberto smiled and said, "Nobody will be interested in releasing a Joao Gilberto songbook." Don't ask me why the great Gilberto thought that [laughs].
JW: What do you feel when you're singing one of Gilberto's songs? IK: Here's my creative process for any song: I listen to the original recording until I absorb all the elements. Then I start singing the song alone, a cappella, in my home studio. I do this for hours and hours. Sometimes I practice a tune for months. When I feel I have forgotten all that I have learned, I know I'm ready to sing the song live or record it.
JW: Why? IK: I have to ensure that I will not feel hesitation or fear, which will paralyze me. Nothing can compromise the free flow of passion and feelings when I sing.
Tomorrow Ithamara talks about singing with guitarist Juarez Moreira on her new album, working with bossa nova legends Antonio Carlos Jobim and Luiz Bonfa on previous projects, the biggest hurdles she faced when singing Joao Gilberto's songs, and the U.S. charity to which all Bim Bom proceeds are being donated. JazzWax tracks: Ithamara Koorax's Bim Bom: The Complete Joao Gilberto Songbook is a sensual bossa nova album and her finest CD to date. Ithamara's charm and optimism are irrepressible and a perfect fit for Gilberto's spare, smoldering melodies. What's more, Ithamara is joined here only by guitarist Juarez Moreira, who brings enormous technique and tenderness to the Gilberto canon. Together, they patiently tease out the beauty of Gilberto's simplicity in warm, shimmering lines. Bim Bom is available at iTunes and at Amazon here.
Another album by Ithamara with similar tenderness is Obrigado Dom Um Romao (2007). It's available at iTunes and Amazon here. By contrast, Brazilian Butterfly (2006) will give you a taste of Ithamara's stronger vocal style. It's available at iTunes.
JazzWax clip: Here's Joao Gilberto's original recording of Bim Bom in 1958...
We tend to think of experiments with atonality in jazz as largely an East Coast phenomenon. But in fact, West Coast musicians also were involved in the movement. Musicians on both coasts were exposed to chromatic and atonal 20th century Western classical music. Many Hollywood film composers were influenced by 20th century classical pieces (Arnold Schoenberg and Igor Stravinsky lived in Los Angeles for a time), and jazz musicians who found jobs in the film industry often played this modern film music. Most notable among the California modernists was Lyle "Spud" Murphy, whose 12-tone-based Gone with the Woodwinds! has long been one of my favorite experimental jazz albums. (Hal McKusick's Cross Section: Saxes is another.)
Born in Salt Lake City in 1908, Murphy's discography dates to the late 1920s, when he played organ in Slim Lamar's band. But his big claim to fame early on was arranging for Benny Goodman's orchestra in 1935 and 1936, the band that ignited the national swing craze following its performance and radio broadcast at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles. Murphy also arranged for Tommy Dorsey and other bands during the mid-1930s.
In 1938, Murphy led his own band and recorded for Decca, and from 1940 to 1943 he arranged steadily for Charlie Barnet. After World War II, Murphy began working in the film industry, where he arranged, orchestrated and composed for more than 50 films. He also was an educator who authored 26 music books.
But in the late 1940s, Murphy took time out to develop a 12-tone technique known as his "system of horizontal composition" or "equal interval system." He designed this system so it would be adaptable for film scores and popular music. The point of the system was to give arrangers and musicians a lighter-sounding jazz-classical option to the heavy, brooding Euro-centric classical forms popular at the time.
In 1955, Murphy was able to document his experiments on 12-Tone Compositions and Arrangements (Contemporary Records), an album that was later renamed Gone With the Woodwinds! Featured on this date were leading West Coast studio musicians Abe Most, Jack Dumont, Russ Cheever, Chuck Gentry, Buddy Collette [pictured], Andre Previn, Curtis Counce and Shelly Manne.
In 1957 Murphy recorded another 12-tone jazz album for Gene Norman Records called New Orbits in Sound. He contracted a different mix of studio pros: Milt Bernhart, Dick Nash, Russ Cheever, Buddy Collette, Morrie Crawford, Bill Ulyate, Curtis Counce [pictured] and Larry Bunker.
In the years that followed, Murphy continued to work in film and taught his 12-tone interval technique to many jazz musicians, including pianists Oscar Peterson and Gerald Wiggins, and bassist Curtis Counce. Murphy died in 2005.
What I've always loved about Gone with the Woodwinds! is its light, mischievous sound. The album places an emphasis on clarinets, flutes and saxophones, and all seem to be tiptoeing around as thought sneaking home after a fun night out. Flutes swirl up, clarinets swing down and Previn [pictured] plays lovely 12-tone solos. If ever there was an album that captured the music of the wind, this is it.
Murphy's Fourth Dimension, the album's opening track, features harmonies that are built on intervals of a fourth (C to F for example), with Previn still managing to quote Twisted. Or dig Poly-Doodle, an exuberant polytonal sketch that shows flourish at every turn. Murphy also takes on standards. Sophisticated Lady, These Foolish Things and Perdido retain their chord changes, but Murphy adds 12-tone touches during interludes and at the end. [Photo from the 1955 recording session]
Perdido is a remarkably beautiful arrangement and an example of West Coast influences on 12-tone music. It features all saxophones, and different sets of reeds compete contrapuntally with others, some arranged to sound like strings. The album's high point, though, is Blue Moon, a patient standard that allows Murphy to demonstrate the 12-tone model on an inhale-exhale ballad. The result is absolutely gorgeous. [Photo: Lyle Murphy in the 1930s]
To quote Murphy from the Gone With the Woodwind's liner notes:
"My 12-tone system is not a style, and it is not related to the Schoenberg system. It can be applied to any existing style (or type) of music, or it can be the basis for complete originality. It is merely a question of musical architecture. For this album, its structure consists of horizontal patterns written in equal intervals and using the 12 tones as a basis...
"Quite often the piano joins the woodwind quintet and fulfills the requirement of an extra instrument or two by playing above, below or in between the various woodwind parts. It is a good deal of fun and quite a test for the perception of tone color to try to pick the piano lines from these instrument combinations." [Photo: Lyle Murphy]
Wow. I may be wrong but I don't think the word "fun" pops up in the writings of any other 12-tone composer or arranger.
JazzWax tracks: Lucky for you that Gone With the Woodwinds! and New Orbits in Sound are available as downloads at iTunes and at Amazon here and here. Both are superb recordings and a delight to the ear. New Orbits in Sound features more straightforward writing and arranging by Murphy, mostly due to the more traditional jazz instrumentation. There's also a track of Transcontinental at iTunes and Amazon from Murphy's 1938 band here. And then there's a CD by Mora's Modern Rhythmists playing the arrangements of Lyle Murphy here.
Many top jazz albums recorded in 1959 were exhaustively celebrated this year in print on behalf of their 50-year anniversaries. The list includes Kind of Blue, Giant Steps, Time Out,Mingus Ah Um and The Shape of Jazz to Come. One recording that's in the same league but has been strangely overlooked is Art Farmer's The Aztec Suite, with arrangements by Chico O'Farrill. Recorded on July 29 and 30, 1959, The Aztec Suite appeared on United Artists Records, which was largely devoted to recording UA movie soundtracks. Today The Aztec Suite is somewhat submerged as part of Art Farmer's Brass Shout (Blue Note).
How big a deal is The Aztec Suite? Pretty big. To give you an idea, here's the lineup of musicians:
Art Farmer, Bernie Glow, Marky Markowitz, Nick Travis, Joe Ferrante (trumpets); Frank Rehak, Jimmy Cleveland and Tom Mitchell (trombones); Jimmy Buffington and Tony Miranda (French horns); James McAllister (tuba); Zoot Sims (alto and tenor saxes); Seldon Powell (tenor sax); Spencer Sinatra (reeds); Sol Schlinger (baritone sax); Hank Jones (piano); Addison Farmer (bass); Charlie Persip (drums); Jose Mangual, Tommy Lopez and Willie Rodriguez (percussion); Chico O'Farrill (arranger) and Al Cohn (conductor).
Quite a band—and a spectacular trumpet section for those in the know. O'Farrill wrote The Aztec Suite specifically for Farmer [pictured], who recorded it just after he returned from a European tour with Gerry Mulligan. Farmer was months away from recording The Great Wide World of Quincy Jones and Meet the Jazztet, the first of his series of collaborations with Benny Golson. Farmer was at his peak, and he delivers an extraordinary performance throughout on trumpet rather than flugelhorn, which he would come to play more often in the years ahead. O'Farrill's writing is truly stellar, laying down a rhythmic obstacle course for Farmer to navigate. The suspenseful explosions of sound and beats are positively exhilarating. After this album, O'Farrill [pictured] would begin an extensive period of swing arranging for Count Basie, a relationship that would last throughout the 1960s.
In truth, The Aztec Suite isn't really a Latin-jazz album in the traditional sense. The emphasis is on jazz. Like O'Farrill's Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite of 1950 or his Second Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite of 1951, jazz leads with a range of Latin beats following. For The Aztec Suite, O'Farrill created enormously complex and exciting charts, resulting in an album that can only be equated to Johnny Richards' Something Else for Bethlehem in 1956. French horns soar while the all-star trumpet section hammers away, with the percussion constantly on the prowl. O'Farrill's reed writing also is exceptional here.
In a 1999 interview with Luis Tamargo of Latin Beat, O'Farrill touched only briefly on The Aztec Suite:
LT: In 1958, you settled in México City, where you composed your so-called Aztec Suite for Art Farmer.
CO: I thought of that title because I wrote the suite in México, but if did not have anything to do with Mexican music (LAUGHTER). I played it again with Art farmer a few years ago.
There are six tracks on The Aztec Suite. The lengthy title track runs 16 1/2 minutes and puts Farmer through many different sequences of varying levels of intensity. The suite frequently shifts tempos and moods, building from bump-and-grind film-noir ballads to flaming mambos. The normally staid and perspicacious Farmer rips through the dramatic passages in fiery form, and his blowing is all out.
The suite is followed by Heat Wave, an uptempo Latin burner that includes a tenor sax solo by Zoot Sims [pictured]. Delirio is a Latin ballad with a fabulous reed section sound. Woody 'n' You's theme is taken in waltz time before breaking into 4/4, featuring another terrific tenor sax solo by Sims. Drums Nagrita is mid-tempo cha-cha-cha, while the standard Alone Together is treated as a Latin-flavored ballad. Best of all, the album functions as one big suite, with one song naturally following the next as part of a larger statement.
The only drag is that there weren't four more albums like this one. O'Farrill's cinematic arrangements here are simply breathtaking, no matter how many times you listen to the album.
It's also a shame The Aztec Suite wasn't re-issued this year with extensive liner notes, alternate takes, photos and all the love and respect an album of this magnitude deserves.
JazzWax tracks:The Aztec Suite can be found as a download at iTunes and Amazon as part of Brass Shout, an album Art Farmer recorded two months earlier in May 1959 with a tentet. If you want to download just the six Aztec Suite tracks from iTunes, you may need to rearrange the order. They appear out of sync. Here's the correct lineup: The Aztec Suite, Heat Wave, Delirio, Woody 'n' You, Drum Negrita and Alone Together.
JazzWax clip: There were no clips of The Aztec Suite at YouTube to share with you. But here's Chico O'Farrill leading an orchestra playing his Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite, which was first recorded in 1950. It gives you a fine sense of O'Farrill's powerfully restless arranging style...
The more time you spend looking at Louis Armstrong on film and listening to him on record, the more you come to a single realization: Armstrong has done more than any other performer to shape America's collective personality. Virtually every entertainer from the late 1930s onward was influenced by Armstrong's folksy sense of humor, relaxed demeanor and high artistic standards. In turn, all of those virtues rubbed off on Americans consuming that entertainment. We experience Armstrong today, and without hesitation we recognize something familiar in ourselves. So much of who we are as a people and what we aspire to be seems to originate with Armstrong. [Photo by John Loengard in 1965 for Life]
Keep in mind, Armstrong was an artist of the highest order who was virtually scandal-free throughout his career. He worked hard, was humble and gracefully aggressive, and had a cozy sense of humor that everyone understood and appreciated. There are plenty of actors and musicians whose fame, lifestyles and fortunes make people wish they were them, if only for a day. With Armstrong, you don't wish to be him. You simply want to be like him, which is a much more do-able goal. [Photo of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong in 1958 by Nat Farbman for Life]
In Part 5 of my five-part interview series with Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal's drama critic and author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong talks about his mission when writing the Armstrong biography, the great biographies Terry had in mind when working on Pops, and what surprised him most about Armstrong:
JazzWax: Was Louis Armstrong's passion for writing more than just the mere act of communication? Terry Teachout: I think so. Through writing, he was able to put his life in perspective. If you had gone from absolute poverty to being one of the most famous people in the world, you would want to understand why it happened and what it is about you that caused it to happen. That’s the real subject of Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, his autobiography. He clearly sees himself as the product of hard work and deferred gratification, and his experience teaches lessons that others can learn from.
JW: Yet he was never evangelical about his experience nor did he lecture others on what they should do with their lives. TT: No never. While he's a Horatio Alger figure, he never would have gotten up in a pulpit and preached a sermon about it. He’s completely unselfconscious about himself and his achievements. He knew he was a genius but never called himself one. He knew he was remarkable and simply thought his experiences might be useful for other people to know about. So he wrote about those experiences in Satchmo. But his writing style is never preachy. I think this is why he wrote as much as he did. It was more of an attempt at self-understanding. [Photo by Herb Snitzer]
JW: Was your ambition with Pops to do justice to Armstrong's magnificent life story? TT: Yes, partly. I wanted to write a book that was pleasurable to read for its own sake, most particularly because I feel that Armstrong was a great artist and a major figure in art and culture.
JW: Yet few biographies treat jazz musicians as serious artists. TT: I agree. I wanted to write the same kind of book about Armstrong that one might write about Igor Stravinsky or Frank Lloyd Wright. We just assume that books about high-culture figures will be written in an artful way and to a high standard of scholarship. The expectation with such works is that they will mirror the artistic qualities of the person about whom they’re written.
JW: Did you have specific biographies in mind when writing Pops? TT: Actually I had three. The first two were W. Jackson Bate's biography of Samuel Johnson and David Cairns' two-volume biography of Hector Berlioz. Both are works of artistic quality written about great culture figures. The third was Richard Sudhalter's biography of Bix Beiderbecke, Bix: Man and Legend. When you’re writing about a great artist, you want your biography to be worthy of that artist.
JW: Your previous biographies of H.L. Mencken and George Balanchine were about artists who were quite different than Armstrong. TT: It’s very difficult to write about a musician or a composer because you are talking about a subject that does not exist or express itself in the realm of words. So you have to translate it for the reader.
JW: Is this part of the reason why you chose to include more than 50 pages of source notes? TT: With the source notes, I decided to remove the scaffolding from around this book before it was published. I wanted to get all that stuff out of the way so readers would be clear to read the narrative without interruption.
JW: What will one find in the notes? TT: If you read them, you’ll come away knowing how critics and journalists reported on Armstromg. You’ll see the first time he was mentioned in Time, The New York Times and in Walter Winchell’s [pictured] column. You'll see how critical opinion of Armstrong started to shift toward greatness. I try to talk in an intelligible but analytical way about how Armstrong's music works. I tried to place him in the larger history of our culture. But I tried to do all this within a narrative biography that flows smoothly from year to year, event to event.
JW: Footnotes certainly can get in the way of a good read, especially when they're extensive. TT: I didn't want the reader to feel I was pausing along the way to give a lecture on one thing of another. I wanted the book to have a narrative sweep of, say, William Manchester’s books on Winston Churchill. I wanted readers of Pops to come away knowing many different kinds of things about Armstrong. While there are some Armstrong scholars who will know mostly everything in this book, most readers will be surprised by its contents. It cuts a wide swath.
JW: The fact-checking alone must have been labor-intensive. TT: There are no factual assertions made in this book that weren't traced to their original source. It’s the most factually accurate book written about Armstrong. In addition, every word of the manuscript was read by two people who know the Armstrong story and literature well—Dan Morgenstern [pictured] of the Rutgers Institute of Jazz Studies and Armstrong's producer at Columbia Records George Avakian.
JW: What was their input? TT: Both Dan and George commented on it extensively, and their input was enormously valuable. The manuscript also was read by Michael Cogswell, director of the Louis Armstrong Home and Archive. But I wanted all of the scholarship to be invisible. When you read Pops, you’re hopefully reading a good story that has the advantage of being true.
JW: At the end of the process, what surprised you most about Armstrong's personality? TT: Probably that Louis had a very bad temper. He’d blow up without warning and inexplicably. And as fast as the anger came on, it would disappear the next day. He was sensitive and suspicious about being used, and he was particularly sharp in his anger if he felt that was happening. Armstrong was temperamental, but not like a movie star. When he got mad, there was a perfectly good reason for it. Either he wasn’t treated properly or a member of his band wasn’t performing up to snuff. For example, he’d blow up at musicians for drinking on the bandstand. One person who knew Armstrong well, a member of his All-Stars, told me that when Louis went after you, he knew where to put the knife.
JW: What else surprised you? TT: That while his anger blew in and out, he held grudges against those who delivered deeper slights. Besides his long-running feud with Dizzy Gillespie, Armstrong held grudges against pianist Earl Hines and drummer Zutty Singleton.
JW: Is there a photo of Armstrong that sums him up for you? TT: There’s a photo taken by Eddie Adams about a year before Armstrong died. Louis looks like he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. When I ran across that image, I immediately thought of something Joe Darensbourg, a member of Louis' All-Stars in the 1960s, said to me. Joe said sometimes you’d go backstage and see Armstrong sitting there turning over his trumpet and looking sad. You couldn't see into why he felt that way. Then he’d go on stage and become Louis again.
JW: What does that image tell you about Armstrong? TT: It points to some of the psychological complexity of the man. After all, there’s no such thing as a simple genius, you know? Everyone loved Louis Armstrong. Yet he’s not boring. Explain how that can be, and you’ve explained Louis Armstrong.
JW: Do you think Armstrong would have enjoyed Pops? TT: I can’t say. I hope so. He might have been a little surprised at reading a book about him that had so many source notes [laughs]. He certainly would have appreciated the book’s candor. He made clear in his own statements that he always aimed to be open and honest. I think he would have appreciated the fact that I was frank about his private life, about his love life, about his feuds and grudges. And about his art.
JazzWax tracks: After you collect the essential Louis Armstrong recordings, there are a handful of offbeat albums to explore. There are two that I'm particularly fond of. The first is The Real Ambassadors, a soundtrack to a show developed by Dave and Iola Brubeck that was recorded in 1961. The show was performed just once at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1962. The album features Armstrong, Carmen McRae, Dave Brubeck, Lambert Hendricks & Ross, and others. It's a fabulous coronation of Armstrong as the global face of America. Among the standouts: Armstrong and McRae singing The Duke and Armstrong singing a North African bossa nova called Nomad. You'll find the album here.
The second offbeat album is Louis Armstrong and His Friends. Recorded in 1970, this CD isn't for everyone. Some find it odd. I like the record because it places Armstrong in unusual musical settings, forcing him to bring life to songs that are tough fits. Included here are Everybody's Talkin', Give Peace a Chance and We Shall Overcome. My absolute favorite track is The Creator Has a Master Plan, Pharoah Sanders' sequel to John Coltrane's A Love Supreme on which Armstrong is teamed with vocalist Leon Thomas. Best of all, there are two alternate takes of this track. The album is at iTunes or here.
JazzWax pages: Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is available online here. For a fine taste of Terry's writings on artists and musicians, A Terry Teachout Reader is a must. His essay on the late singer Nancy LaMott will bring tears to your eyes.
JazzWax clip: Here's a clip from The Real Ambassadors (1961). It's Everybody's Coming (the vocal version of Everybody's Jumpin' from the Dave Brubeck Quartet album Time Out)...
Here's my favorite track from Louis Armstrong and His Friends (1970), The Creator Has a Master Plan. The combination of Armstrong's New Orleans growl and Leon Thomas' African yodeling is pure genius...
Given Louis Armstrong's jolly nature, it's somewhat fitting that his last known recording would be a narration of The Night Before Christmas. The recording was made at his home in Queens, N.Y., on February 26, 1971. Louis would die five months later. Throughout his life, Armstrong understood the misery of his origins, the heights of his fame and his enormous good fortune along the way. But Armstrong wasn't a big believer in happenstance. He knew that everything he had achieved came through hard work, sacrifice and sweat. Armstrong had little patience for defeatism or blame. "My whole life, my whole soul, my whole spirit is to blooow that hooorn," Armstrong told his doctor. [Photo of Louis Armstrong in 1954 by Eliot Elisofon for Life]
In Part 4 of my interview with Terry Teachout, the Wall Street Journal drama critic and author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, talks about the challenges he faced writing the biography, Armstrong's puzzling affinity for one specific bandleader, what Armstrong did with his two portable tape recorders, and a few interesting LPs that Terry found in Armstrong's record collection:
JazzWax: Writing a biography of Armstrong must have been daunting. What were your ambitions for Pops? Terry Teachout: I wanted to write a biography that was perfectly serious and would tell musicians things that perhaps they didn’t know. I also wanted it to engage with Armstrong's music on a level befitting its complexity and seriousness but which would be completely intelligible to a reader who was not a musician. I wanted to write a book that would make sense to everybody. If you’re writing about someone like Armstrong, for whom sophistication and simplicity are central to his career, this is the least you could do for him. [Photo by John Loengard in 1965 for Life]
JW: What was your biggest challenge? TT: I knew going in that I needed to make Armstrong's music intelligible through words. I also had to absorb and translate the vast volume of Armstrong-related material that has been published in the last quarter century. Jazz as a scholarly field is really quite young.
JW: How so? TT: Serious jazz scholarship of a kind comparable to what we take for granted in the other arts really has only been around for about only 30 years or so. There is monographic literature on Armstrong. There are books about his younger years. Armstrong scholar Ricky Riccardi is about to publish a book on his later years. There are papers on Armstrong and opera, about Armstrong’s private tapes, and quite a bit of other literature.
JW: But what were you trying to do in Pops that's different from everything that's out there? TT: I wanted to take all of the material and synthesize it into a clear, straightforward narrative that embodies everything we now know up to this moment about Armstrong without being clumsy, top-heavy or excessively detailed. If after you read my book and want more, you can turn to my source notes in the back. There are 22,000 words of source notes. There, you can pursue the things that I write about Armstrong in a more detailed way.
JW: How did you absorb all of that material? TT: [Laughs] You work really hard. You think a lot. I believe the secret of writing a good biography of an artist is to know as much about as many different things as possible. What this book tries to do is place Armstrong in the wider context of art and culture in the 20th century, not just jazz or music.
JW: And his experiences with art and culture? TT: Yes. After all, Armstrong is not just a man who played jazz trumpet in nightclubs. He also had a major success on Broadway, made movies and TV appearances throughout his life, he loved opera and he knew more about modern jazz than most people realize. I discovered this when going through his record library.
JW: What was the most surprising record in there? TT: One by Stan Kenton. Actually, I take that back. The biggest surprise wasn’t music. It was a copy of the First Drama Quartet’s performance of George Bernard Shaw’s Don Juan in Hell. He also had Orson Welles’ recording of Julius Caesar. And these records weren’t just gifts he shoved onto the shelf. They seemed to have been played. He also had albums by Gerry Mulligan, George Shearing and other jazz artists.
JW: When did he have time to listen to all these records? TT: Louis spent 300 nights of the year on the road. So he taped his record library and traveled with two reel-to-reel player-recorders. These are the recorders on which he made his private conversations.
JW: Tape recorders for listening and taping conversations? TT: Bing Crosby and Louis were among the first Americans to own commercial tape recorders. For Louis, they weren't just for music listening and to capture backstage chats with friends. He recorded his performances and studied them. Armstrong was a more self-aware, introspective artist than most people realize.
JW: Why does Louis bother to listen to his performances? TT: From 1947 on, he does this to perfect them. But Louis also used the tape recorders for fun. He taped mock radio shows with friends. He’d sit around and record taped letters that he’d send to friends. He made amazing tapes on which he plays along with tape recordings of his own and of other musicians. But the primary purpose for lugging them around was to study his own playing and to listen to his music library every night. This collection included his own recordings and those of Guy Lombardo.
JW: Guy Lombardo? TT: Lombardo [pictured] was his favorite bandleader. He loved Lombardo because Lombardo loved melody. There’s something fundamentally simple about Armstrong’s interest in music. He loved all kinds of music, from Italian opera to some Thelonious Monk, he said in passing. What Armstrong loved most of all, though, was melody. You can hear this in his playing and his singing.
JW: Lombardo seems a bit straight even for Armstrong. TT: And yet Lombardo appealed to him as he appealed to lots of black listeners in the 1930s. Lombardo played beautiful, straightforward, simple arrangements that were entirely about the melody.
JW: What does this say about Armstrong? TT: Armstrong had a sentimental streak, and Lombardo [pictured] appealed to it. Armstrong wasn’t joking when he said that Lombardo was his “inspirator.” He really meant it. He even sat in with Lombardo’s band and praised him on every occasion.
JW: So Armstrong's ear needed a steady diet of melody to remind him what pleased the mass market? TT: Anyone who truly wants to understand Louis Armstrong, who was not a simple person, has to understand this aspect of him as much as his innovative genius as a soloist. He’s a very American figure in that way, a Walt Whitman-like figure.
JW: That's brilliant. An everyman poet who understands the essence and aspirations of the masses. TT: Armstrong speaks to all men in all conditions because he is so completely open to such a wide range of human experience. Remember what the Roman dramatist Terence wrote in The Self-Tormentor, “I am a man and nothing human is alien to me.” Nothing was alien to Louis Armstrong, which is part of why he is so great and so culture-transforming. Armstrong takes everything that comes to him through the ear and eye, and turns those experiences into music.
JW: And yet he never makes anything hard to understand. TT: That aspect also fascinated me. Neither in public nor in private does Armstrong ever talk about music in a technical way. Of course, he might have done so in a rehearsal as a band was reading down an arrangement. But overall, he always talks about music in metaphorical language.
JW: In what way? TT: Armstrong always described his own playing and performances in terms of what he recalled from his past. He saw his playing as a way to paint pictures. He talks about being on the bandstand and thinking about things that happened to him in his life. Duke Ellington was the same way. In my experience, this is not how musicians generally refer to what they do and how they do it.
JW: What's more, Armstrong seems to be all in, never holding back. TT: He was most concerned about being communicative. He was not inward turned at all, though he certainly was introspective. Armstrong is the only great jazz musician who also was a first-rate and highly personal writer. He wrote two autobiographies. The first was ghosted, but the second was unassisted. And that second one, Satchmo: My Life in New Orleans, is pretty much exactly what he wrote. [Photo by Lisl Steiner, 1957]
JW: But his writings weren’t confined to two books. TT: There are hundreds of surviving Armstrong letters and maybe even thousands. He wrote many articles drawn from the letters he wrote. He had a personal prose style that sounded like Armstrong talking. His writing style truly is remarkable.
JW: Why did he write so often? TT: I think he was interested in writing to understand the meaning of his own experience. Remember this is a man who was born in the poorest part of New Orleans, to a father who abandoned him the day he was born. His mother was a prostitute. Louis should have ended up in prison. Instead, he went on to become the most famous jazz musician in the world. He pulled himself out of his surroundings to become a culture-transforming genius. And he was well aware of that accomplishment and expected the same of others.
Tomorrow, in the final part of my interview series, Terry talks about the scholarly models for his Armstrong biography, what surprised him most about the trumpeter, and Armstrong's temper.
JazzWax tracks: Louis Armstrong's duets with singers should not be missed. The fabulous exchanges are always lively, colorful and relentlessly upbeat. A nifty collection can be found at iTunes. It's called Armstrong Sings With... and features 20 tracks with Ella Fitzgerald, the Mills Brothers, Jack Teagarden, Billie Holiday and others. Best of all, the sound quality is superb. As for Armstrong's narration of The Night Before Christmas, it's available as a download here.
JazzWax clip: For those not old enough to have seen Louis Armstrong live, this clip at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival (from Jazz on a Summer's Day) is about as good as it gets, including his Rockin' Chair duet with Jack Teagarden...
Greatness always finds itself under siege. It can't be helped. Sooner or later an impatient rival comes along who wants the attention and adulation afforded the top dog. In the late 1940s, this natural course of events pitted Dizzy Gillespie against Louis Armstrong. Since his days in Cab Calloway's band, Gillespie worked hard to stand out, and when recognition wasn't forthcoming in 1941, he kept raising the ante until a violent confrontation erupted with Calloway. Fortunately bassist Milt Hinton stepped in, but not before Calloway was accidentally cut on his leg by Gillespie's knife. By the late 1940s, Gillespie was pushing Armstrong's buttons for virtually the same reasons.
In Part 3 of my interview with Terry Teachout, author of Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, the Wall Street Journal drama critic and arts essayist talks about the mounting friction between Gillespie and Armstrong, how Armstrong was able to adapt so easily to the movie and TV camera, Armstrong's admiration for Barbra Streisand, and the likely reason why Armstrong never had children:
JazzWax: What motivated Dizzy Gillespie's barbed comments about Louis Armstrong? Terry Teachout: I suspect behind Gillespie’s response was the desire of a younger giant to overcome his father figure. But I don’t get into that in the book. There also was a much greater racial self-consciousness on the part of the black bebop players of Gillespie’s generation. They were all filled with a desire to present themselves as serious artists. When Miles Davis began recording as a leader, he also wanted to present himself as an artist who was more serious in demeanor, who didn't feel any need to pander to white audiences, as Davis would have said. [Photo of Miles Davis by Herb Snitzer]
JW: Gillespie and Armstrong played together just once as far as I can tell, on TV. TT: Yes, singing and playing Umbrella Man. It was part of the Timex All-Star Jazz Show on NBC in 1959. The joint-appearance was preplanned but not rehearsed. There was no question that Gillespie knew Armstrong was going to come out and join him on that number. By then, Gillespie was no longer taking pot shots at Armstrong in public. And Armstrong very much admired Gillespie as a player. Everything had been made up by then between them.
JW: Yet it appears there’s a touch of competitiveness and slight unease between them. TT: This scene featured two great jazz musicians on stage in front of a live camera, and they both played the same instrument, so it’s natural that they were going to engage in some form of one-upmanship.
JW: And yet it's their only joint appearance. TT: As far as I know, it’s the only time that Armstrong and Gillespie performed together in public. And it is one of the very few times that Armstrong performed with a bebop musician in a mainstream setting, other than the ones he made with Oscar Peterson’s trio on the records producer Norman Granz wanted him to make. It's a shame. When you hear Louis and Dizzy play together, you wish there were albums of their collaboration.
JW: Louis’ understanding of the camera is always remarkable. His natural skill seems to pre-date film. TT: [Laughs] Well there’s just no way to know where that came from. That ability was present from his first feature film in 1936, Pennies from Heaven with Bing Crosby. You realize immediately that the camera loves him and that he’s completely unselfconscious and relaxed in front of it.
JW: You also notice that his stage presence is seemingly effortless, like his playing. TT: Armstrong was quite clearly a natural actor. He does a few movies, not many, in which he has a fair number of lines to read. And you can see immediately that if he had been white, or if performance was something he had wanted to do, that he might well have had a parallel career as an actor, similar to the one enjoyed by Frank Sinatra. And for the same reason: Armstrong was a natural actor.
JW: Is acting easier for singers? TT: I think it comes more naturally. Jazz instrumentalists who don’t sing rarely make the leap to acting. Yet singers of all kinds have found playing roles or even themselves fairly easy. They’re able to tap into their storytelling skills. Armstrong had it from the beginning. Unfortunately that talent wasn’t fully realized in his career. When you see Armstrong in Cabin in the Sky [1943], Glory Alley [1952] or A Man Called Adam [1966], you realize that film acting was a missed opportunity for him and that Armstrong could have been an actor.
JW: This is evident in Hello Dolly as well. How did Armstrong get along with Barbra Streisand? TT: Interestingly, he was a great admirer of hers. He talked about her in a late interview in 1968 with the BBC, just before he filmed the movie. The BBC radio segment was a feature that the network still airs called Desert Island Discs. The show dates back to 1942, and guests are invited on to pick eight records they’d take if they were banished to a desert island.
JW: What did Armstrong say? TT: Among the eight was Barbra Streisand’s People. Armstrong admired her enormously and I think quite sincerely. He didn’t make public statements that weren’t sincere. He praised her in his interview as "Madame Streisand," going on to say, "She's trying to outsing everybody this year."
JW: The short scene they filmed together of the title track is quite something. TT: That scene was shot very quickly. It has been said it was shot in a single take and definitely in a single day. There was a great deal of strife on the set of the movie.
JW: How so? TT: Streisand and Walter Matthau hated each other. In fact, she didn’t seem to get along with anyone associated with that film as far as I know. But when you look at that scene, you realize that Louis and Streisand went together well no matter what you think of her, and I’m not a great fan of hers, as you know. The opportunity to follow up didn’t exist, however, because Armstrong became ill shortly after the scene was put in the can.
JW: There’s also a fabulous clip on the web with Armstrong sandwiched by Caterina Valente and Danny Kaye in 1966. TT: Armstrong was fabulous on duets. This is one of the many things he has in common with Bing Crosby, whom he loved. They were both good at interacting with another performer and making that performer look good without submerging their own style. At the end of my book, I have an appendix of 30 particularly interesting recordings by Armstrong. One was the recording he made of You Rascal You with Louis Jordan. And of course he and Jack Teagarden sang Rockin’ Chair numerous times on stage and it always sounded fresh.
JW: After living with Armstrong as a subject for so long, what lesson did you learn about yourself? TT: I think Louis reinforced in me something that was already there. That is, the belief that it ought to be possible to say whatever you have to say in a way that is fully accessible to the widest possible audience without diminishing its seriousness. I think that’s a lesson Armstrong can teach any artist or writer.
JW: What’s the magic in that lesson? TT: Armstrong played to a wide audience, so he's obviously a popular entertainer. But he always did this without compromising his essential artistic seriousness. Though I write as a critic and journalist about subjects that are quite complex, I try to write in a serious way that is also intelligible. I tried to write Pops that way.
JW: Did Louis Armstrong have children? TT: No. He wanted to. At one point he thought he had an illegitimate child, but that turned out not to be true.
JW: Was this a conscious decision on the part of Armstrong and his third wife Lucille? TT: I think he was sterile. I have source note about this in my book. Armstrong smoked marijuana every day of his adult life. My guess is, and it’s just a guess, that Louis was sterile due to a depressed sperm count as a result of his marijuana smoking. But he wanted to have children and loved them and they loved him. He looked after Clarence Armstrong, his nephew who was mentally ill, for all of his adult life. [Photo of Louis Armstrong by Herb Snitzer]
Tomorrow, Terry talks about the challenges he faced writing a biography of Louis Armstrong, the surprises he found in Armstrong's record library, why Armstrong carried two reel-to-reel tape recorders with him on the road, and the puzzling choice of Armstrong's favorite bandleader.
JazzWax tracks: Many readers relatively new to Armstrong have been asking me for a simple CD collection with a wide range of older and newer tracks. Well, for $9.99, you can download an album with 23 of Armstrong's most wonderful tracks. If you don't dig Pops after this set, it ain't never gonna happen. The recordings range from the humid Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans and A Kiss to Build a Dream On to Hello Dolly, Blueberry Hill and the irrepressible Basin Street Blues. The album I'm referring to is Louis Armstrong: The Definitive Collection and you'll find it here as a CD or download.
JazzWax pages: Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) is available online here.
JazzWax note: According to Pops, when Louis Armstrong appeared on the BBC's Desert Island Discs in 1968, he chose eight singles. There were three of his own (Blueberry Hill, Mack the Knife and What a Wonderful World); his duet with Ella Fitzgerald of Bess You Is My Woman Now; one 78-rpm each by Guy Lombardo, Jack Teagarden and Bobby Hackett; and Barbra Streisand's People.
JazzWax clips: Below I have assembled the three clips mentioned above in my post:
Here's Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong performing Umbrella Man in 1959. It's from a Japanese TV show. Interestingly, the only English phrase used is "sense of humor." This one is far better than any other Umbrella Man clips at YouTube. If you don't understand Japanese, slide the bar to 00:30...
Here's Armstrong with Caterina Valente and Danny Kaye in 1966 singing a medley of songs that Armstrong made famous. By the way, that's Paul Weston's orchestra and arrangement behind them...
Here's Armstrong and Barbra Streisand singing Hello Dolly...
Louis Armstrong is slowly slipping into obscurity. Sadly, his music is heard less and less on the radio, and fewer and fewer people know or care much about his sound or his contribution to jazz and America's personality. Like Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong's oxidation is a direct result of his parodying singing style and stage presence. By today's standards, both are far removed from what we now define as entertainment, and both feed into stereotypes that blacks and whites find uncomfortable and embarrassing. Which is terribly sad, since America's greatest jazz musician still has much to teach us about music and ourselves. [Photo by Philippe Halsman for Life]
Fortunately Terry Teachout [pictured] has done a Herculean job of halting Armstrong's fading process. With any luck, Terry's new restorative biographyPops: A Life of Louis Armstrong will trigger renewed interest in the trumpet great and win back some of the respect he deserves. While I, too, have grappled with Armstrong's entertainment value in a past post, it's clear to me now that Pops must be viewed archeologically, like a time capsule from another era in American musical history, not as a modern figure.
In Part 2 of my interview series with Terry, the biographer and blogger talks about why Armstrong is America's most famous jazz musician, Armstrong's only quasi-bebop recording, and why Dizzy Gillespie felt compelled to criticize Armstrong publicly:
JazzWax: How did Louis Armstrong get his nickname "Pops?" Terry Teachout: Like many celebrities who are in the public eye and meet a lot of people, Louis had trouble remembering names. So he got into the habit of calling everyone "Pops," as a term of endearment. Well, they started calling him Pops back. By the 1940s and certainly by the 1950s, Pops was the accepted nickname for Louis among those who knew him. As for the title of my book, Pops has a double meaning—it’s Armstrong's nickname and he's the father figure of jazz.
JW: One of my favorite quotes on Armstrong comes from a fan: “He looks so happy, and I feel happy watching him.” TT: Armstrong made people glad. He radiates warmth, and there's nothing false about that warmth. Armstrong was a good person, not an insipid or dull person. He was genuinely a good person, but one with a strong personality. And you feel that aspect of Louis every time you see him on film or hear him on record. And that’s why he’s the most famous figure in jazz history and Coleman Hawkins or Bix Beiderbecke aren't. [Photo of Louis Armstrong in 1965 by John Loengard for Life]
JW: That’s a fascinating concept. TT: Armstrong is as musically important as everyone thinks he is. But musical importance was not, in and of itself, what made him famous. It was Armstrong's personality that made him famous and influential. Sidney Bechet, who was a few years older than Armstrong and chronologically the first great jazz soloist, was arguably as gifted in every way as Armstrong. But Bechet had a narrow, distrustful, inward-turned personality, and no one wanted to be like that. By contrast, if you saw Armstrong on stage, you wanted to play like him because you wanted to be like him. [Photo of Sidney Bechet by William P. Gottlieb]
JW: When did musicians start to become uneasy with Armstrong’s act? TT: In the late 1940s a younger generation of musicians emerged that viewed Armstrong as an impediment to what they were trying to achieve.
JW: In that regard, was bebop something of an insurrection against Armstrong and what he stood for? TT: Not quite. Technically, bebop emerged gradually starting around 1941. It was a new expression on the part of younger musicians who felt that the language of swing had run its course. Where Armstrong comes in regarding that generation’s reaction isn’t until later in the decade, when bebop becomes established as the predominant form of small-group jazz. By then, Armstrong was a public symbol of something they wanted to get away from as jazz musicians.
JW: Why the turn against Armstrong publicly? TT: Young musicians wanted to be taken more seriously as artists. I think Miles Davis is the best example of this. Coincidentally, Armstrong and Davis were on the same record label—Columbia—at precisely the same moment in the 1950s when important things were happening in their careers. Davis talks in his own autobiography about his attitude toward Armstrong. He admired Armstrong enormously as a musician but didn’t want to offer himself up as an entertainer the way Armstrong did. To Davis and his generation of musicians, the music mattered more than trying to win over audiences with an entertaining personality.
JW: And yet Gillespie, as bebop’s pioneer, was a spectacular entertainer. TT: Davis talks about Dizzy the same way. Davis felt that great jazz musicians no longer had to act like performers. That explains the attitude of the bebop generation toward Armstrong. Of course, they respected him as a musician. They couldn’t help it. They just didn’t want to be entertainers. Except Dizzy, of course.
JW: Why was there so little interaction between Armstrong and bop musicians on recordings? TT: There are recordings made in the mid-1940s in which you can hear Armstrong’s playing taking on certain aspects of bop. For example, Snafu, made with the Esquire All-Stars in 1946, features a bebop unison line written by Leonard Feather. On the date you had Armstrong, Jimmy Hamilton (clarinet), Johnny Hodges (alto saxophone), Don Byas (tenor saxophone), Billy Strayhorn (piano), Remo Palmieri (guitar), Chubby Jackson (bass) and Sonny Greer (drums).
JW: And what happened? TT: Armstrong plays the first solo. It sounds like Armstrong, but you can hear him taking in new ideas and thinking about how he might want to play going forward at the very moment he is leaving one part of his career behind.
JW: So in essence, at that moment Armstrong decides to reject bop? TT: You can hear on Snafu that if Louis wanted to go in bop's direction, like Coleman Hawkins did, that path was open to him. But Louis didn’t want to do that. I think he sensed that bop, in its complexity, would not be as entertaining to audiences as the music he had pioneered. Also, giving up the entertainer side of his personality was an impossibility. But Armstrong’s rejection of bop had nothing to do with playing it safe. He was just comfortable with who he was, and he knew that there would always be an audience for his pure approach to jazz.
JW: But Armstrong’s decision wasn’t passive. He attacked bebop publicly in the late 1940s. TT: In interviews given after World War II, in response to mounting criticism from Gillespie and other bebop musicians, Armstrong attacked bop as being too complicated for audiences. Armstrong was afraid that if jazz moved in bop’s direction, it would become disconnected from its popular audience. He famously wound up calling bop “this modern malice.”
JW: Yet he could appreciate the musicianship. TT: Absolutely. He respected Gillespie enormously as a musician.
JW: What was the origin of the Armstrong-Gillespie feud? TT: You can nail the date precisely. The friction started with the Time magazine cover story on Armstrong in February 1949. In an interview for the Armstrong profile, Gillespie was condescending toward Armstrong. We don't know whether the motive for Gillespie's tone was Armstrong's stage style or the fact that Time was profiling Armstrong and not him. Or a combination of the two. In either case, Gillespie said Armstrong had been a great player in his time but that he was essentially an unschooled player who simply played from the heart. Gillespie went on to say that the difference between Armstrong and bop players was that “we study.”
JW: How did Armstrong take it? TT: He was still fuming about that quote as late as the 1960s. We know this because of the Life magazine interview in 1966. He doesn’t use Gillespie’s name but he refers directly back to it by saying, that he didn’t have to study or learn the basics, and yet those bebop players did. The implication was clear: that to be considered exceptional wasn't a matter of studying but of being passionate and genuine.
JW: Was he referring to Gillespie? TT: There’s no possible question that he was talking about the Gillespie interview of 1949.
JW: What happened after the Time interview in 1949? TT: Gillespie starts taking shots at Armstrong in public, mostly commenting on Armstrong’s demeanor as an performer. He referred to him as a plantation character. Which is funny coming from Gillespie, who was as much of an entertainer as Armstrong but in a different way. But in all fairness, you can see what was motivating Gillespie: a desire for greater recognition and a desire to be taken seriously as an artist. Unfortunately, Gillespie did that at Armstrong's expense, and Louis didn’t like it nor did he forget it.
Tomorrow, Terry talks about the only time Armstrong and Gillespie played together on TV, Armstrong's innate understanding of the camera and how to win over audiences, the Barbra Streisand album Armstrong said he would take with him to a desert island, and Armstrong's singular skill as a duet singer.
JazzWax tracks: Louis Armstrong's near-flirtation with bebop on Snafu (1946) can be found at iTunes or here on Louis Armstrong: The Complete RCA Recordings. Another fine box is Mosaic's The Complete Louis Armstrong Decca Sessions (1935-46)here.
JazzWax pages: Terry Teachout's Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) includes a list of 30 key Louis Armstrong recordings and more than 50 pages of source notes. The book is available online here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Louis Armstrong playing Snafu in 1946 with the Esquire All-Stars. Move the bar to 4:35 to hear Snafu...
About
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of 55 More Songs," "Anatomy of a Song," "Rock Concert: An Oral History" and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax has won three Jazz Journalists Association awards.
