JazzWax

Interview: John Scofield

John Scofield has one of the most distinctive sounds of all the electric guitarists who came of age in the jazz-fusion era in the early 1970s. John is able to make his notes ring like a bell, and his lines are horn-like, living in the space just where rock meets the funky blues. [Photo above of John Scofield couresty of John Scofield]

John is perhaps best known today for his period with Miles Davis, though he has recorded plenty of albums before and after. With Miles, John recorded Star People, You're Under Arrest and Decoy, as well as all of the touring dates in the U.S. and Europe between 1982 and 1985.

In my conversation with John, 60, the guitarist talks about entering the jazz space with rock exposure, and his experience with Davis:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
John Scofield: In Wilton, Conn. My parents had met in Washington, D.C., during World War II. My father was a market researcher for a petrochemical company. He knew a great deal about rubber. I was born in Dayton, Ohio, but we moved to Houston for a year in 1959 when he worked for a company there. Then we moved to Wilton when he took a job nearby at Mobil Chemical. [Pictured above, John Scofield in 1963 with his first guitar]


JW: Were you a prodigy, or did you take to music slowly?
JS: The latter is probably accurate. In my suburban town, everyone was into rock. Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were early influences. I had heard them in concert and also began to become interested in folk music, R&B and the blues. That led me to jazz in high school and lessons with Alan Dean, a guitar teacher and frustrated bebopper who worked at Merritt Music, a local music shop. I took lessons with him starting at age 15. Before that I was a run-of-the-mill rock guitar kid. Alan helped me with jazz and the blues. [Pictured above, John Scofield with his first electric guitar in 1965]


JW: And after high school?
JS: I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston starting in 1970. At Berklee I met great players. I wasn’t a wunderkind by any means. Music was a slow, hard road for me from age 16 to 23. When I went to Berklee, it was still the Herb Pomeroy Berklee. Drummer Joe Hunt came up to teach. Vibraphonist Gary Burton and bassists John Neves and Steve Swallow were there, too. Gary was the first great jazz artist I had a chance to play with often, and he was a big help in my development. [Photo of John Scofield in 1968 by Joe Marone]


JW: By 1974, you were a big deal.
JS: I was discovered by drummer Billy Cobham just after I had recorded The Gathering with Gary Marks, a singer-songwriter and guitarist who was sort of like Michael Franks, only jazzier. I had been playing with vibraphonist Dave Samuels around Boston. We were trying to attract enough attention that we’d get booked to play in New York. [Pictured above, John Scofield with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band]


JW: How did you catch the attention of Cobham?
JS: Dave Samuels was friends with vibist Dave Friedman and drummer Horacee Arnold. Horace wanted to record a demo and put together a band. He had already made records for Columbia and was playing at Richard’s Lounge in Lakewood, N.J. So I went in with him to make the demo, which was produced by Billy Cobham. [Pictured above, John Scofield with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band]

JW: What happened?
JS: A month later, Billy invited me to join his band. The band was playing rock venues. Michael and Randy Brecker were in the band. I had already heard them play with Horacee Arnold.


JW: Before Cobham, you recorded with Gerry Mulligan, yes?
JS: I had played a few gigs with Gerry. He had come up to Boston to appear at the Jazz Workshop in 1974. Drummer Alan Dawson got Dave Samuels and me on the band for the week. Gerry wanted to experiment. When the gig was over, Gerry said, “That was nice. See you next time.” Then one day I got a call from Gerry asking me to come down to New York to play a concert. [Photo above of Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker in rehearsal at Carnegie Hall in 1974 by Franca R. Mulligan]

JW: What did you do?
JS: I drove down and made the job. Stan Getz was on the gig with his quartet. They did stuff with three horns. Then Chet Baker, Gerry and Stan played. Gerry was nice to us and would hang. I remember he had gigs and wanted me to be in his band.

JW: What did you do after you joined Cobham’s band?
JS: I had to call Gerry and tell him. He was nice about it.


JW: Looking back, a good move?
JS: Now when I tell people I went with Billy Cobham instead of Mulligan, they don’t know who Cob is and wonder why I did that. At the time, I admittedly was torn. But Michael and Randy Brecker were my idols. [Pictured above, John Scofield with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band]

JW: Weren’t you also motivated by a need to play music younger people identified with?
JS: Oh sure. When you went to Paul’s Mall, a pop-rock club that was part of the Jazz Workshop, young people were lined up waiting to get in, and the club was packed. Fusion was cutting edge and hadn’t sold out yet. 


JW: How did you join Miles Davis’ band in November 1982?
JS: Through Bill Evans, the sax player. By then I had been around. I had been playing with guitarist Mike Stern at 55 Grand Street in New York. I played there weekly, and we had become friends. The club had become a happening hangout. I knew Miles’ drummer Al Foster and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller. [Pictured above, Miles Davis and John Scofield]

JW: Two guitars?
JS: Mike Stern was terribly strung out at the time. He’s long since cleaned up. But at the time, Miles didn’t want to fire him. But he did want another guitarist in the band in case Mike didn’t make it. Miles had just straightened up himself and was clean.

JW: After you joined, what happened?
JS: The group played with two guitarists for a year. Playing with Miles wasn’t a stretch. I started out playing the blues, and had already played in fusion groups. I had been pushing myself as far as I could go and was a huge fan of Miles’. I was 30 years old and had had enough time to sit with Miles’ records and listen to everything he had recorded.

JW: How did the band sound?
JS: At the time it seemed un-together. We would just show up and play. Miles had these vamps and heads in between vamps that he had recorded on cassette and given to Gil Evans to write out. Miles asked Gil to turn them into heads.

JW: What about Gil’s sheet music?
JS: Mike couldn’t read them because he was whacked. Miles wanted another guitarist who could read. While we read the music, Miles would come up with vamps. I learned the existing book, which happened to be other vamps. Miles was in another place.

JW: How so?
JS: He had just married Cicely Tyson in 1981 and was cleaning up his act. He was coming out of his shell of being high all the time. Cicely was helping him enjoy his celebrity. Miles was never worried. He wanted a big rocking beat to play his stuff over.


JW: What were you listening to when you first joined the band?
JS: B.B. King and John Lee Hooker. I joined the band when Miles was making Star People in 1982. After that, he was listening heavily to Prince, Madonna and Top 40.

JW: Madonna?
JS: Miles was always listening deeply for production value. He heard what most of us didn’t. His way of thinking was, “I want to incorporate that. How do I do it in my space?”


JW: I’m surprised he covered so few pop tunes. I think it’s a shame.
JS: I do too. When he recorded Time After Time, the Cyndi Lauper tune, he also was considering about 10 other pop tunes, too. I think one was by Kenny Loggins. But we never completed them.


JW: Why?
JS: He told me he could only play them once. If a pop tune worked when he ran it down, we’d record it. We had about 8 or 10 lead sheets to different songs, but only Human Nature, which Michael Jackson had recorded, and Lauper’s tune made the cut. Miles believed in first-take magic.

JW: What were the others?
JS: I think Loggins’ Footloose, a Lionel Richie tune, maybe Lady, and DeBarge's Life Begins With You.


JW: That’s so funny. I wrote a post in November saying I wished Davis had recorded DeBarge’s All This Love.
JS: That’s a great song, too. Miles played along with the DeBarge LP while he taped it. I have a tape that I made at his house of him playing Life Begins With You. What Miles did with it will give you chills. Playing with Miles was a big deal for me, but I always wondered where the It Never Entered My Mind Miles was.

JazzWax tracks: John Scofield's latest album is A Moment's Peace with Larry Goldings (p,org), Scott Colley (b) and Brian Blade (d). Tracks feature originals and standards including I Want to Talk About You and You Don't Know What Love Is.

Jazzwax clip: Here's John Scofield's Plain Song from his new album...

 

And here's John playing Steeplechase in Paris in April 2010 (it's from his DVD, New Morning)...

 

Interview: Larry Greene (Part 2)

Back in the late 1940s, the number of radio stations in the U.S. multiplied rapidly thanks to the F.C.C.'s willingness to hand out licenses. Many of these stations filled airtime with records rather than live musicians. As a result, a station's success was highly dependent on the personalities and tastes of their disc jockeys. To promote their dj's and image, stations developed jingles and promotions. One of the first to help them with this strategy was Larry Greene—a Los Angeles jazz pianist, jingle-writer and advertising entrepreneur. [Pictured: Larry Greene in the early 1970s]

In the 1950s, Larry and his wife Toni became a one-two punch for radio stations. Stations brought them in to write catchy melodies and lyrics that sold stations like a box of detergent or a pack of gum. The Greenes' jingles were so catchy that listeners would tune-in just to hear them. And that was the point. This was certainly true of WNEW in New York, which by the late 1950s began commissioning the Greenes for large variations on the theme they had created.

In Part 2 of my two-part conversation with Larry, the 85-year-old jingle writer talks about coming up in the business and how he created the famed WNEW theme:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
Larry Greene: I was born in Sioux City, Iowa. I had health problems, so our family doctor recommended more exercise. My mom enrolled me in dance classes. By the time I was 3 years old, I was making stage appearances. I also was singing, tap dancing and playing the ukulele on a local radio station in Sioux City.  A year later, we moved to Los Angeles for the warmer weather.


JW: Did you keep dancing in L.A.?
LG: Yes. When we came to L.A., my mom took me to a dance teacher named Dave King. Mr. King was associated with Fanchon & Marco, which owned all of Paramount's theaters. In those days, live stage shows accompanied the movies. I guess I was a cute kid and a bit precocious, because about a year later I was appearing in short films and stage revues with a bunch of really talented kids like Dickie Moore and Jackie Cooper. [Pictured: Paramount Theater in Los Angeles in 1933]

JW: You must have been quite a dancer.
LG: Pretty good. In 1932 Dave King entered me in the Dance Olympics, and I won. After that, I sort of lost interest in dancing. But I really liked a girl who also was a student of Mr. King's. The girl's mother was our rehearsal pianist, so I kind of hung around the piano when she rehearsed her daughter, Frances.  

JW: Who was the girl?
LG: By the time she signed a contract with MGM, Frances' name had been changed to Judy Garland. But back then, I was through with dancing and singing. Instead, I was into learning to play the new piano my folks had bought me.


JW: What kind of music did you play?
LG: I started by taking lessons from classical teachers. But it wasn’t until I started listening to jazz that the piano became a passion of mine. We had moved to Fresno by this time, and big bands would roll into town once a month. I would see Benny Goodman, Glenn Miller and Count Basie. By the time I was 14 years old, I was playing with my first band led by Kenny Baker. 

JW: Where is Toni from?
LG: Toni was born in New York. We met in San Francisco. A friend of mine was in the steel business and opened a nightclub and talent agency. I went up to San Francisco to see how things were going for him. When I walked into the talent agency, there was Toni. She came down to L.A.  on a modeling job.

JW: How did you get started in advertising and jingle writing?
LG: I had been involved in a number of things. I was a pianist who worked at the studios and taught students. I was into commercials, and one of my students worked for an ad agency. He said he had to come up with a jingle. That was Bob Sande. So we started making sound commercials. [Pictured: Album by the Sande & Greene Fun-Time Band]

JW: When was this?
LG: This was in the late 40s. We were one of the only production companies out here that worked exclusively on sound. Most agencies did print and hired outside people to make sound ads. Jingle writing came easy to me. We worked with ad agencies that would give us a feel for the demographic we were trying to reach, and we'd create them. Naturally, we did a lot of work for radio stations.

JW: How did you start writing radio jingles?
LG: Back in 1957, Toni and I created a jingle for KFWB in Los Angeles. By then, Toni was my wife and was learning the ad business. She had a fabulous, natural touch as a lyricist. After the ad with the jingle started airing,  the station had a meteroric rise, going to #1 in the market in just 90 days. It was the first time a single melodic line was used to identify the station’s logo.

JW: What was the next big break?
LG: Harvey Glascock, the general manager at WHK in Cleveland, wanted a similar package, as did WNEW in New York. Harvey loved what we gave him. I guess I was riding high on the enthusiasm that WHK showed for what we had done. So I sat down at the piano after everyone had left the room and started to play. And there it was—the WNEW jingle that wound up remaining on the air until the station went dark in 1992. Without Harvey’s intervention, I never would have had the opportunity to write for WNEW at all. [Pictured: Aretha Franklin at an WHK event]


JW: How did the “in the style of” series come about?
LG:  It was an “ah-ha” moment. The idea just came to me. I thought, “Why not kill two birds with one stone?” I could use the WNEW theme to underscore the station’s brand and also highlight the type of music the station aired. It would personalize their programming and add another subliminal dimension to the sound of the station. 


JW: Where did the idea start?
LG: When I had begun to create packages of jingles for radio stations, I had always written a long version of a jingle, usually as an instrumental. These versions were basically as long as an average 45-rpm single. Not only were the station’s call letters and frequency featured on vocal versions but also the city or coverage areas, and sub-themes, like seasonal versions. The sub-themes were longer and allowed me to introduce jazz solos and melodic lines to enhance the call letters and frequency logo while keeping the listener’s interest in the music.

JW: Sounds like making a record.
LG: It was. As a matter of fact, our pop instrumental version for WHK ended up on Cleveland jukeboxes. In Baltimore, the long version we wrote for WCBM was featured by the Baltimore Philharmonic Orchestra, and Lalo Schifrin did a recording of the WNEW Metropolitan Radio Thematic called New Fantasy.


JW: In New York, was the Stan Getz and Bill Evans recording of the WNEW theme inspirational?
LG: No. I had produced many in that series way before Stan and Bill did their version of the WNEW thematic in May 1964.

JW: How many "in the style ofs" were there?
LG: I lost count. We started working with WNEW in 1959, completing a number of sessions a year. We continued on with Metromedia after the exclusivity part of our contract ended in 1973 or 1974 and kept doing stuff for WNEW and Metromedia until the late '70s.

JW: Whose styles did you replicate?
LG: Off the top of my head, we did Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Hank Mancini [pictured], Ted Heath, Neal Hefti, Billy May, Woody Herman, Joe Harnell, Nelson Riddle, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Les & Larry Elgart, Burt Bacharach, Wes Montgomery, George Shearing, Oscar Peterson, Peter Nero, Toots Thielemans, Wynton Kelly, Les Brown, Perez Prado, Lionel Hampton, Charlie Barnet, Pete Jolly and Strings, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Mantovani, Si Zentner, Mason Williams, Marty Paich and Cal Tjader. We even did  Spike Jones, Guy Lombardo and other comedy cues.

JW: Who was in the band?
LG: The spots were recorded on the West Coast. So we used top studio musicians of the period, including Ray Linn, Don Fagerquist, Al Porcino, Frank Rosolino, Milt Bernhart, Marshall Cram, Lloyd Ulyate, Ronnie Lang, Herb Geller, Gene Cipriano, Plas Johnson, Bud Shank, Hal Blaine, Shelly Manne, Alvin Stoller, Emil Richards, Larry Bunker, Lou Singer, Jack Costanzo, Red Callender, Chuck Berghofer, Morty Corb, Al  Viola, Dennis Budimir and Alan Reuss. I was on piano or Paul Smith, Pete Jolly and Bobby Hammack. 

JW: Pete Jolly?
LG: Pete Jolly was only known locally when I first used him.  Soon he did a couple of albums, so we decided to do an “In the Style of Pete Jolly” spot. As I wrote the spot, I left the solo for Pete to improvise. Pete asked me what I wanted him to do, and I told him to “Play Pete Jolly.” I finally had to sit down at the keyboard and show him what distinguished his playing.

JW: Did you arrange them?
LG: I did all the instrumental and vocal arranging, all of the key contracting, most of the producing, and some of the piano work.

JW: Which “in the style of” gave the band the most trouble?
LG: None of them did. I used pros who could read and play anything, and everything was written out for them. Even the solos were somewhat sketched out. 

JW: Who plays the Charlie Barnet [pictured] sax solo in the Barnet version? It sounds like Plas Johnson.
LG: I don’t remember for sure. Plas may have played it, but I think I used Justin Gordon on that particular cut.

JW: The Count Basie spot sounds pretty authentic.
LG: It’s funny, when I spoke to Count Basie, he remarked how well he remembered doing the recording session. Of course, it’s not him. Subsequently, I was told other principals thought they remembered cutting the spots that we had  produced.  That was the height of flattery for me.


JW:  Sounds like you've had a lot of fun.
LG: I have. I’ve had a lot of great memories—playing for Count Basie [pictured], playing gigs on Central Avenue as a teen, playing a command performance for the King of Thailand, how I got Toni involved in the business writing lyrics... a lot of stuff I hadn’t thought about in years. Thank you for the opportunity to think about my life. I will be forever grateful to you for that.

A JazzWax thanks to Joe Fay at WNEW.org.

JazzWax clips: Here's another one of Larry Greene's WNEW themes from the "in the style of" series...

 

Interview: Larry Greene (Part 1)

Back in the late 1950s, Larry and Toni Greene created a series of radio jingles for WNEW-AM in New York. Larry wrote the jingle's melody line and his wife Toni wrote the lyrics. At the time, 1130 was one of the country's oldest and most loved big-band and pop stations on the dial. The jingle the Greenes had created remained a part of the station until its shuttering in 1992. The theme's breezy longevity is directly related to its carefully crafted, addictive melody line and lilting words. As a kid growing up in the '70s, I listened to the station and couldn't wait to hear the different themes. [Photo: Larry Greene in the early 1970s]

The WNEW jingle was so popular that in the early 1960s Larry and Nat Pierce wrote arrangements of it in the specific styles of different bands, combos and solo artists. Think of these as musical impersonations. Today, I'm going to let you listen to a handful. Tomorrow, I'm going to let Larry explain how they were done.

First, here's how the WNEW jingle sounded straight, which will plant the romantic theme in your head:

 

Now let's have fun. Here's the theme in the style of Charlie Barnet...

 

Here's the WNEW theme in the style of Count Basie...

 

Here's the WNEW theme in the style of Stan Kenton...

 

Here's the WNEW theme in the style of Nelson Riddle...

 

Here's the WNEW theme in the style of Antonio Carlos Jobim...

 

Here's the WNEW theme in the style of the Dave Brubeck Quartet...

 

And because New York has been so warm this week, I couldn't resist sharing this one. (here's a cleaner audio version if you prefer)...

 

Hooked? If you want to hear about a dozen more, go here. I've already set them up for you at YouTube.

A JazzWax thanks to Joe Fay at WNEW.org.

Interview: Herb Snitzer (Pt. 2)

To wind up with exciting candid photos of jazz musicians, photographer Herb Snitzer [pictured] had to be part big-game hunter and part button-pushing bully. On assignment, Herb developed tricks for making himself invisible and stealthily moving in on subjects. But he also had to know when to prod a little to stir up a musician's human side. To produce the desired results, Herb had to be fearless, patient, invasive and congenial. 

In Part 2 of my two-part conversation with Herb, the photographer talks about the start of his jazz career and the trickiest moments behind his camera's view-finder:

JazzWax: How did your jazz photography career start?
Herb Snitzer: After my one-man show at the Museum of the City of New York, I approached Metronome, the jazz magazine. I could see from its pages that the editors enjoyed photography as an art form. [Photo: Central Park Series (Snowy Benches and Tables), by Herb Snitzer, 1959]

JW: Magazine photography was very different in the late 1950s, wasn't it?
HS: It was, but so was photography in general. Nobody talked about photography as art in those days. In 1957, I can’t recall a single New York gallery that was showing photography. The arts were pretty much about painting, sculpture and music. I knew a little about jazz, but I did my homework before I met with the editor, Bill Coss.

JW: What did you do?
HS: I looked at previous issues of Metronome. Though the publication loved to feature photographs, and the editors clearly enjoyed photography, most of the images didn’t hit me. They were a bit flat. One day Bill called and paired me with Bob Perlongo, the magazine’s associate editor. Bob was writing a profile of Lester Young, and Bill wanted me to go with him to the Five Spot to take photos.

JW: How was your first night on the job?
HS: It was a turning point. I loved Lester’s music. I also was knocked out by my proximity to Lester’s sound. He didn’t mind that I moved so close to take photos of him. I don’t think he cared. It all became one: instrument, music and photographer. Poor Lester died six months later.


JW: What did you feel being so close to Young?
HS: There was a vibration. When you’re at arm’s length, the space in between has its own energy. The closer you get the more intense that energy becomes. [The story behind the image above can be found here.]


JW: Weren’t you intimidated and afraid to get so close?
HS: I was naive, I just barged ahead. I didn’t think there was anything wrong with doing this. I was so intent on doing it, and Lester didn’t mind. Most musicians weren’t bothered by it. I had to get pretty close, too. Remember, I wasn’t shooting with a long lens. It was a normal 50mm lens. To get a close-up, I had to get physically close.

JW: Actually, many of your images are surprisingly close.
HS: Nothing held me back. I had a job to do, and projects just took me over. As I became better known among performing musicians, there was less and less initial resistance or suspicion. When I’d walk into a club, I’d just wave to them, and they’d acknowledge me.

JW: What was your greatest strength?
HS: My height. I've always related jazz photography to combat photography. I’m a little guy—5-foot, 6-inches. All small people make small targets. I never felt musicians were intimidated by me because I was usually smaller.

JW: How did you get them not to flip out?
HS: It takes time. They needed to know who I was. Familiarity helped.


JW: Did you ever have friction with a musician?
HS: I was photographing Sarah Vaughan in 1987. She was performing at a festival in Switzerland, and I was covering it for the concert’s producer. I had known Sarah since the early ‘60s, so we were friendly. In Switzerland, she was at the piano during a morning rehearsal. She’s was a terrific pianist. She was playing up and down the scales. Suddenly, she took her tongue and placed on her upper lip. It wasn’t an ideal image, but it was different so I snapped the picture.

JW: What happened?
HS: When Sarah heard the shutter, she glared at me. We both knew there was going to be a problem. Her look was “OK, no more—that’s it. I let you in, and now you’re out.” I immediately apologized and said, “I’m really sorry, Sarah. I’ll never publish that photo.” It wasn’t flattering, and we both knew it instantly. She appreciated my apology and promise, and said, “Thank you.” And true to my word, I never published the image.

JW: And yet many of your photos have an edge.
HS: My goal isn’t to compromise the artists or make them look foolish by shooting weird photos. My mission is to find a perspective, an expression that captures who they are and allows them to stand out.

JW: But curiosity is driving you, too, yes?
HS: Absolutely. I always want a finer understanding of the people I’m photographing. I want to go beyond mere composition. I’m always looking and waiting to expose their humanity. I want my photos to show what these people mean to me. My images are about the underlying thesis behind all this music and how special these people are as artists. That’s important to me.

JW: Did your own upbringing make you more sensitive to the humanity factor?
HS: I think so. As a photographer, I set out to celebrate the exceptional talents of musicians and I do so by waiting patiently for that singular moment when an expression shows their humanity. Growing up in a poor neighborhood made me more aware of this. Each photo is a personal statement. When I take one of my images of Louis Armstrong and put a mat around it along with a frame and hang that image on a wall, I’m not only making a statement about the music but I’m also saying that this is someone who means something to me.


JW: Which jazz artist was most interested in you?
HS: Nina Simone. She really appreciated my work and would talk to me about it. She would make comments about my pictures, like, “You really captured that person” or “You really understood what that person is about.” That she took the time and had the interest is still amazing to me. [Photo of Herb Snitzer with Nina Simone]


JW: Which brings us to your famous photo of an optimistic Miles Davis backstage in 1958.
HS: I took many photos of Miles over the years. Miles was very difficult. He liked to bust chops. I have a photo of Miles that he didn’t intend to have taken. [The story behind the image above can be found here.]

JW: What happened?
HS: In 1988 he was in Boston performing as part of the Boston Globe Jazz Festival. Fred Taylor, the concert’s producer, said to me that Miles didn’t want anyone backstage. But Freddy and I were friends, and he said he’d sneak me back. He warned me to be discreet.

JW: Were you?
HS: Yes. Miles was out on stage performing. Suddenly he turns and sees me in the wing. He was wearing sunglasses and lowered them, dropping his head to peer over the top. His eyes were glaring.


JW: Didn't he remember you?
HS: Oh sure. But his eyes were still filled with anger. I said to myself, “What are you going to do Miles, beat me up?” I had a 180mm zoom lens, so I just kept clicking. I didn’t care that Miles was angry. I wanted that photograph. I wanted that look. I wanted something to remember him being a jerk. I sort of have the same feeling at Miles that Toscanini did when he said that great quote about Richard Strauss [whose activities during World War II were repugnant to Toscanini]: "To Strauss the composer I take off my hat; to Strauss the man I put it back on again."


JW: How did you view Davis' soul?
HS: I saw Miles not as the hip and cool person he was made out to be. For him to constantly play the badass told me how insecure he must have been inside. That’s the kind of stuff I tried to work out as a photographer. [Photo of Miles Davis at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1990 by Herb Snitzer]

JW: What were you thinking when you were looking through your camera's viewfinder at jazz legends?
HS: I was asking myself, “Who is this person really?” And then I'd wait for the expression that reveals the inner person. Before I'd arrive, I'd get as much information as possible about the artist and then try to make a visual statement about how I feel about the subject. I still do that.


JW: Are you patient?
HS: Yes, very. You have to wait and wait and wait sometimes to get the right expression. I took one of the last photos of Miles performing at the 1990 Newport Jazz Festival. It was so iconic.

JW: How did you get it?
HS: I was talking to photographer Herman Leonard. I was off to the right with a 180mm lens with other cameras around my neck. Miles looked up and had this pensive look. I said to myself, “Oh my god, how vulnerable.” I just felt it. It was intuitive. Once that camera went up to my eyes, my head went someplace else.


JW: Where’s the art in photography?
HS: When I go into a museum and look at work from, say, 1912, I think that someone is going to do this in the future, look back on photos from today and maybe look at some of my work. Art doesn’t survive if it’s just a pretty picture. You have to create something that touches people, that moves them and reminds them that they’re human—and that jazz musicians are human as well. [The story behind the image above can be found here.]

JazzWax note: For more on Herb Snitzer, visit his site here.

JazzWax pages: Herb Snitzer's Glorious Days and Nights: A Jazz Memoir features his touching recollections and rich black-and-white photos. It's available at online book retailers and at Amazon.

Interview: Herb Snitzer (Pt. 1)

What makes a jazz photographer tick? For years I have admired Herb Snitzer's unorthodox images of jazz greats Thelonious Monk, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Lester Young and many others. Herb's photos always have this "how did he take that?" quality, leaving you both baffled by their execution and grateful for his daring, since they expose new sides of these musicians' personalities.

In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Herb, 79, he talks about life growing up in Philadelphia, years in the Army and how he wound up in New York with a one-man show at age 27.

JazzWax: You grew up in Philadelphia in the ‘30s and ‘40s. Tough life?
Herb Snitzer: Poor. Even though the Depression technically had ended as the country began to build up before World War II, many people were still poor. To this day I still remember the struggle for survival that went on in my neighborhood. People had been out of work for some time, and no one felt the economy or country was truly stable. [Photo of Count Basie at a Roulette Records rehearsal in 1960 by Herb Snitzer]

JW: And how was your family’s world?
HS: Our world was relatively stable. My father had a small corner grocery called Joe’s Place. We were never lacking for food, but there wasn’t much money and our neighborhood was Jewish and rather insulated and self-contained. My parents were refugees from the Ukraine and had come over here in 1905. Their world was their family. [Philadelphia City Hall]

JW: How did growing up poor affect you?
HS: I became politicized very early, at age 15 or 16. Looking around and seeing so much inequality made me have empathy for people. As a child, I saw very rich people and very poor people, and couldn’t understand why there was such a big contrast. Also, I was a second child.


JW: How does that factor in?
HS: My brother was 13 months older, and in an Orthodox Jewish family like ours, the first-born gets everything. Constantly feeling second-best contributed to my reality and made me more sensitive as an artist. Today, my brother is the founder and president of a mutual fund company. [Photo of Eric Dolphy and John Coltrane at the Village Gate in 1961 by Herb Snitzer]

JW: Did you always listen to jazz?
HS: Not specifically. I listened to the radio a lot. It was a dancing time, and I was a pretty good dancer. I was aware of the various swing orchestras. But I had only a casual interest in music. I wasn’t sophisticated enough to go to clubs. I was more interested in football. I played on the high school team as a halfback, but I never lasted a game. Somewhere along the way I’d get knocked out.

JW: What did you do after high school?
HS: I enrolled at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art. I was determined to be a painter or designer. I settled on becoming a furniture designer. My parents were appalled by my decision to draw and paint in college. I didn’t get much support from them. 

JW: When did you graduate?
HS: Before I had a chance to do so, I was drafted in February 1953, during my sophomore year. I was 20 years old. I did basic training at Camp Pickett near Blackstone, Virginia. I had always been athletic, so I was pretty good at training. The Korean War was on, and the last thing I wanted to do was kill or be killed.

JW: Were you sent over there?
HS: Almost. The camp’s colonel knew me from my playing on the Army football team. I was pretty swift. He told me he would keep me from being sent over. He asked me what I wanted to do. I told him I wanted to be sent to Germany to study art. He said he couldn’t do that but could send me to Fort Belvoir in Virginia, just outside Washington, D.C.

JW: What did you do there?
HS: I began to get involved with photography. Before the Army, I had made photos of family members with a Kodak box camera as early as 1948. I’d take the film to a drugstore to be developed. In the Army, I learned to develop negatives and make prints. I was with the Signal Corps’ photography department. I photographed mostly parachute jumps with a primitive 35mm camera.


JW: What next?
HS: I was transferred to Fort Knox in Kentucky, where they put me in engineering school, which was removed from what I wanted to do. There was a lot of math and calculations for building roads and things like that. I had little interest, but it was better than going to Korea. At Fort Knox, I hung out with photographers and spent time painting watercolors. Everyone knew I wasn’t an engineer.

JW: What did you do there?
HS: Eventually, I became a company artist and wound up making maps and graphics of soldiers on maneuvers. I would plot the maps and photographs that were necessary for simulation attacks. I had to come up with drawings and was pretty good at it. For some reason I also was good at shooting a rifle, even though I had never handled a weapon before.

JW: When did you get out?
HS: In April 1955. I had been in the Army for 27 months. After my discharge I went home to Philadelphia to finish college on the G.I. Bill. I took a double major—furniture design and photography.

JW: When did you move to New York?
HS: In June 1957, to look for work. My senior thesis had been an extended photo essay of Eugene Ormandy [pictured] and the Philadelphia Orchestra. I went up to New York because that was where everything was going on. I was a furniture designer, and all the companies were there.

JW: First time in New York?
HS: No. During my last two years of college I had traveled to New York every other weekend. I’d stay at the YMCA in the West 60s for $4 a night and go to galleries, museums, and Broadway shows for 95 cents. I knew then that I’d move to New York as soon as I was out of college.

JW: When you moved up, where did you live?
HS: At 58 West 70th St., between Central Park West and Columbus Ave. It was a five-story walkup. I was sure I would take the city by storm. I started to look for work immediately. I met Bertha Schaefer, who was an interior designer and gallery owner. She worked for the Singer Furniture Co. and hired me to do designs. I was sketching furniture all day, but I really wanted to be a photographer. I had set up a darkroom at my apartment in the bathroom, processing film in the bathtub.


JW: Did you enjoy drawing chairs and sofas?
HS: Not really. I knew I needed to get a photography job. So I opened the phone book and found a photographer whose name I knew—Arnold Newman [pictured]. I called him up and told him I was looking for a job. I told him about my Ormandy project. He told me to bring it over. Newman turned out to be from Philadelphia, too.

JW: Where was his studio?
HS: Nearby, on 67th St., off Central Park West. He looked at my small portfolio and offered me a second assistant’s job for $40 a week. I would go with him on shoots and carry the strobe lights, which were heavy. I also made prints.

JW: What was Newman like?
HS: He was difficult. Everything had to be a particular way. You had to act just so. If something was the tiniest bit off in a print, you’d have to make it again. I stayed with him for three months and quit.


JW: Why?
HS: I couldn’t take the endless harassment in front of other people. He was one of the top commercial photographers who took portraits of famous people and Presidents. But he could be brutal. [Photo of President Eisenhower by Arnold Newman]

JW: How did you find your next job?
HS: By looking through magazines. I found a fabulous photo of Marcel Marceau, the mime, on the cover of one. The photographer was Robert Ritta. So I called him up, and he invited me over. I showed him my portfolio, and he hired me for three days a week at $25 a day. That beat Newman’s job.

JW: How long were you with him?
HS: About a year. In that year, I started making photos. On days when I wasn’t working for Bob, I was photographing Central Park—the people strolling there and the landscape—and meeting people from the photo services. Someone at Magnum directed me to Grace Mayer, the curator at the Museum of the City of New York. I showed her my photos of Central Park, and she gave me a one-person show. [Photo of Grace Mayer by Berenice Abbott, 1936]


JW: Wow, talk about an opportunity.
HS: I know. That’s what made New York so special and magical back then. I was 27 years old with my own show called Four Seasons of Central Park. It was a wonderful opening, and every newspaper covered it. The show opened work opportunities for me. [Central Park, N.Y.C., 1960, by Herb Snitzer]

Tomorrow, Herb talks about what went through his mind when he went out on assignment to photograph jazz legends starting in the late 1950s.

JazzWax note: For more on Herb Snitzer, visit his site here.

JazzWax pages: Herb Snitzer's Glorious Days and Nights: A Jazz Memoir features his touching recollections and rich black-and-white photos. It's available at online book retailers and at Amazon.

Interview: Robert Glasper (Pt. 2)

Jazz fans tend to be highly partial. We insist that one trumpeter is better than all others or that one drummer is faster, stronger or more rhythmic than everyone else. We take music personally and like to fight for our particular tastes and choices. This king-of-the-hill view also tends to spill over into the kinds of music we listen to—and what we write off. I would argue this way of thinking isn't a good thing, since it prevents a wealth of new material from reaching our ears.

The Robert Glasper Experiment: Black Radio is an important album that features an emerging jazz style. We shouldn't say, "Oh, it doesn't sound like the kind of jazz I'm used to, therefore it's not worthwhile." Or "This pianist or that pianist is better." Think of this album as Koko or Bernie's Tune or Bags' Groove or Giant Steps or Bitches Brew. It's the start of something new that may or may not develop. But it's different and eclectic and tremendously exciting once you let it in.

In Part 2 of my two-part conversation with Robert, the jazz pianist talks about recording Black Radio, and he recommends five albums that deeply influenced his experimental approach...

JazzWax: Do you add your acoustic or Fender Rhodes piano before or after a vocal is recorded?
Robert Glasper: It depends. For example, on The Consequences of Jealousy, I laid Rhodes [tracks] first and then afterward went on top of it with acoustic piano. Sometimes I choose a song specifically because I want to play Rhodes. But then after it’s over, I hear acoustic piano sprinkles in my mind and go back in and play piano over the track.

JW: Like on Afro Blue?
RG: Yes. This happened after Erykah [Badu] laid her vocal [down]. The band had already recorded the instrumental tracks. Erykah did her vocals later because she was on tour so she couldn’t come to the studio when we recorded. At any rate, we came in and laid the track first with just Rhodes. Then I got with her in New York at the studio. She laid [down] her vocal, and after she finished I laid the piano part to compliment her vocal.

JW: It must be fascinating to accompany a mood after the fact.
RG: It is. I didn’t want to force my piano into the track. I just wanted it to be musically honest with what I thought should be there. I think musical honesty touches people more than something that is over-processed.

JW: Which is hard, since it’s easy to get lost in electronica today.
RG: I wanted to mimic the kind of feeling of Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall.

JW: Really? How so?
RG: He went into the studio, and they recorded all 12 songs with the same instrumentation. It sounds produced by one person. It sounds like one complete thought. One single vibe. That’s why I wanted my piano’s voice running through Black Radio—sometimes up top and other times in the background. It's always there. I play [synthesized] keyboard on only one track. Other than that, I wanted to keep an acoustic-Rhodes backbone running through.

JW: Why?
RG: It’s a constant that gives the album a unified feel. It keeps the concept grounded and gives the album a jazz esthetic. If you remove the acoustic piano, the album becomes a whole other thing, you know? Everything has a color, and when you use colors correctly, you paint a good picture.

JW: What do you love about the late-night soul chill sound of the ‘70s?
RG: Maybe part of it is nostalgia and the feeling that comes from that. My mother played all of those records when I was growing up. But I’ve also always loved live music. My mom would take me to all of her [singing] gigs. I was always around live music and instruments. I didn’t know the whole “produced” thing. I’m a child of live music. That’s where my sound comes from. That’s all I know.


JW: Why is hip-hop so important?
RG: Because it’s the widest platform for a musician. It has the biggest audience, as far as today’s young generation is concerned. [Pictured: Pete Rock]

JW: But that’s a commercial answer. Is it artistically significant?
RG: Totally. It’s important because of that artistry. If you do the wrong thing with hip-hop, you can totally influence people the wrong way. But if you do the right thing, you influence people in a good way. Hip-hop is so huge and it’s so admired. It’s our jazz.


JW: How so?
RG: Jazz was hip-hop in its day. It was new, cutting-edge music. It addressed social issues, issues relating to injustice and problems of the time. Jazz was a reflection of its times in earlier generations. Hip-hop talks about those issues today, just differently. [Photo of Thelonious Monk by Herb Snitzer]

JW: Esthetically, what’s special about it?
RG: From an artist’s standpoint, there are different forms of hip-hop. It’s not all the same, just as jazz is different. Hip-hop has gone through different eras, just like jazz. Some of it I like. Some I don’t like.

JW: What kind do you like?
RG:  For me, I like the melodic side of hip-hop. I like hip hop that samples jazz cats like Ahmad Jamal, Bill Evans and Ron Carter. I like groups like A Tribe Called Quest and artists like Pete Rock. They’re very melodic cats. It’s also musical, with nice warm chords. But with a rocking hip-hop beat, you know what I’m saying? It’s a good feeling for me. Which is what I try to mimic when I play in my piano trio. I try to mimic that sound and that feeling. To me that’s my generation, that’s younger soul music. That’s Earth Wind & Fire.

JW: Which five albums are favorites of yours and heavily influenced your direction on Black Radio? 
RG: Off the top of my head? OK, here goes:

Michael Jackson—Off the Wall (1979). For the sound and cohesiveness, the live instrumentation, the vibe, the songs and the Rhodes.

Herbie Hancock—Thrust (1974). Herbie to me was the ‘70s. His Head Hunters (1973) was important, too.

Roy Ayers—Everybody Loves the Sunshine (1976). It put Roy on the mainstream map. But all of his albums have something to say.

Freddie Hubbard—Red Clay (1970). For the fire.

A Tribe Called Quest—Midnight Marauders (1993). The group’s The Low End Theory also is solid, but Midnight Marauders is a great place to start. Midnight Marauders, beat wise, is ridiculous. It's so musical—it’s like a jazz album. There are lots of samples of artists—Mini Riperton, Joe Sample, Ron Carter and others. It’s in my Top 5 favorite hip-hop albums of all time. I think any jazz fan would dig it.

JazzWax tracks: Robert Glasper's Black Radio (Blue Note) can be found at Amazon and other e-retailers.

JazzWax clip: Here's Move Love from Black Radio...

 

Interview: Robert Glasper (Pt. 1)

Jazz isn't dying—it's changing. And what's emerging is ruthlessly exciting and eclectic. This nascent jazz form, like many that preceded it, is a collage of styles—mixing acoustic improvisation with hip-hop themes, turntable sampling and even black-jazz forms from earlier decades. At the front of this movement is pianist Robert Glasper. As I wrote in the Wall Street Journal about a week (go here), Robert is fast becoming the Duke Ellington of jazz electronica.

Unlike many jazz musicians today, Robert has found a way to make jazz relevant without selling out, going overboard or making the music alien to traditionalists. On his last album—Double Booked—he split the disc between straight-up acoustic jazz and a new experimental form. On his latest CD—Black Radio (Blue Note)—Robert has devoted the entire disc to his new textured sound. For me, Black Radio is the most important jazz album of 2012—and a way forward for jazz.

In Part 1 of my two-part conversation with Robert, 33, the pianist, composer and arranger talks about his vision for jazz's future and why traditional jazz is having trouble gaining traction with younger audiences:

JazzWax: It’s dangerous leaving you a voicemail—a caller could wind up on your next album.
Robert Glasper: [Laughs] Exactly. And you’ll never know it until the album comes out. At first I thought you were talking about the fact that I’m horrible at picking up my messages, because I rarely check my machine.


JW: On Black Radio, you seem to be moving finally toward an fully eclectic, soul-electronic form. True?
RG: I think so. This was an idea I had for a while. With the kind of response we’ve received, it would be stupid not to keep it going. The album is opening a lot of doors. It's  opening some ears. And it’s inspiring some younger cats. I definitely want to keep this experiment open. Plus it’s fun, especially working with other great artists. There are many artists I’ve worked with before who I want to work with on this concept—and artists I haven’t worked with before.

JW: We’re living in collage times—everything overlaps. Do you still view your music as an experiment or is it the future for sure?
RG: That’s kind of my main thing now. To be honest, no one really cares about piano trio albums anymore [laughs]. Don’t get me wrong, I love those albums to death. I listen to them. I’m a jazz pianist.


JW: But?
RG: But you can’t expect the masses to love the piano trio format. And if I like more than one type of music and bring them together in one form, that means I will have more than one audience. When you have more than one audience, it exposes them to all the stuff you’re doing. They’ll become fans, and they’ll check out my piano trio albums. This new concept is something I’m tapping into. It’s part of me. And it’s a natural transition.

JW: On Black Radio, did you wing it in the studio—hoping that magical things would happen? Or was everything carefully planned out?
RG: Black Radio wasn’t planned out carefully. That’s the magic of it. It was very loose. Many people who came to the studio didn’t know what they were going to sing. Others knew what they were going to sing—but I wound up changing the song the night before, and they didn’t know it until they got there.


JW: So it has an improvised spirit?
RG: Yes, that’s why the album has a jazz feel. It was formatted like a jazz record. We went into the studio and kind of hit it. So there’s definitely a freshness and edginess to it because we’re not doing the same stuff we’ve done for years.


JW: Even though the album goes off in a range of soul-chill directions, your acoustic piano is ever-present, presiding over all experimentation, yes?
RG: Exactly. And that was the point. I didn’t want to always have to take a piano solo to be heard. Piano solos don’t always fit on everything. And to be honest, solos turn some people off [laughs]. I wanted to strike a balance, always be there in the background.

JW: But it varies, which delights the ear.
RG: On some songs there’s a piano solo. On others, there isn’t. I just wanted to be sure that all of the songs were good—first and foremost. Everybody loves good songs. And that’s where we fall short in the jazz world today. We think there has to be a million solos on everything. But not everyone likes that.


JW: Have existing jazz styles become exhausted?
RG: I think they’ve run their course in terms of attracting a new audience. In my book, jazz legends are still stars. To me, you know. But I’m a jazz guy. I’m in that realm. To go outside of your realm and get new fans, it’s harder if you’re doing the same kind of music all the time. You have a better chance if you’re exploring new ground. This isn't about business. It's about art.

JW: Is the American Songbook holding jazz back—preventing it from developing?
RG: How so?

JW: You can’t play these standards over and over again and expect to attract a wider, thinking audience.
RG: I agree, you can’t. And the funny thing is, the people in the jazz community are holding themselves hostage with this thinking.

JW: It certainly puzzles me why so many artists think their new My Funny Valentine will top what's already out there.
RG: [Laughs] I don’t want to hear it again. Some people view this as disrespect, but the fact is I’m sick of it. I’ve been on the road for 16 or 17 year. I’ve played with jazz greats and played my share of standards. Now it’s time for a new standard. We can't do the old thing forever.


JW: Yet many jazz fans want musicians to do the same thing over and over again.
RG: You know, the cats that we look up to in the jazz world didn’t do this. They played modern music that they had just written. They played their friends’ songs that their friends wrote. They always played something that was modern and up-to-date. They were current. That’s all I'm trying to do now, without losing what makes jazz special and personal to the listener.

JW: What’s the recipe?
RG: If today’s jazz musicians mirrored today’s times—all of it—the way earlier jazz musicians did, jazz would be more relevant. And we’d be in the here and now rather than focusing on yesterday. Jazz also wouldn’t be viewed as historic music, you know? I don’t know why jazz stopped pushing for the new. Who said jazz is supposed to be about the past? Or that it’s supposed to stop at a particular point?


JW: There’s a lot of Roy Ayers [pictured], Doug and Jean Carn, and Gil Scott-Heron in your music. Who did I leave out?
RG: [Laughs] I played with Gil Scott-Heron. And Stevie. You’re totally right on the ball. But you can’t get that kind of thing across without the right band. My point about the music wouldn’t come across without Casey Benjamin [on vocoder, reeds and synthesizer], Derrick Hodge [on bass] and Chris Dave [on drums]. My campaign would not be heard without them.

JW: Why?
RG: Because they grew up on the black jazz of the '70s that we’re tapping into on this album.


JW: But you didn’t—you were born in 1978.
RG: Right—but I was hearing it at home. My mom [singer Kim Yvette Glasper] played this music all the time when I was growing up in the 1980s and ‘90s. When I was 11 years old, my mother said, “Get your ass out of bed. If you want to be a musician, you have to come with me to see Earth Wind & Fire right now.” She knew what it took and what I needed to hear. She knew what I had to be around.

Tomorrow, Robert Glasper discusses the making of Black Radio and how tracks were recorded, and he recommends five albums that deeply influenced his new approach.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find The Robert Glasper Experiment's Black Radio at Amazon (it's just $6.99). While you're there, check out Robert's Double Booked and his earlier piano trio albums.

JazzWax clip: Here's The Robert Glasper Experiment's majestic take on Afro Blue from Black Radio, with Erykah Badu on vocal...

 

Scott Faragher: The Hammond (Pt. 2)

Scott Faragher is author of The Hammond Organ: An Introduction to the Instrument and the Players Who Made It Famous (Hal Leonard). It's a terrific new softcover book that tells you everything you will ever want to know about the Hammond organ and then some. It's a book about America's most potent crossover instrument by a writer who is deeply passionate about the subject. Fortunately, his publisher had the good sense to use mostly color photos to illustrate the pages. [Pictured at top: Scott Faragher]

Yesterday in Part 1, we talked about the Hammond organ's rise—from Fats Waller, Wild Bill Davis and Bill Doggett to Jimmy Smith and beyond. Today, a slightly different approach.

In Part 2 of my chat with Scott, we're done analyzing. It's time to get down and talk about Hammond organ albums of note:

JazzWax: In general, what type of Hammond organ albums does an enthusiast like yourself enjoy most?
Scott Faragher: I love how the organ stands out on the early gospel recordings by artists who appeared on Nashville’s Nashboro Records. These included records by Brother Joe May and, later on, Oris Mays' Bound For Mt. Zion and Dr. Morgan Babb’s Pray for Me. 

JW: What about the organ as a backdrop instrument?
SF: I like Billy Stewart’s Sitting in the Park and I Do Love You—two of the most emotionally moving R&B records ever cut. But then sometimes I want screaming Hammond organ, as in the early works of hard-rock groups like Deep Purple or Steppenwolf. On the jazz side, there’s the little-known Reuben Wilson and his version of Cisco Kid and Last Tango in Paris.

JW: Now we're going to get specific. If you were to choose just 10 Hammond organ albums, what would they be.
SF: Let's give it a shot…

Hank Marr Quartette—Live at Club 502 (King/1964). This is without a doubt my favorite organ record of all time. Unlike many so-called live albums, this is not diluted by studio overdubs. It’s live and raw all the way through. Marr's version of One O’clock Jump is dizzyingly intense. The interplay with the organ between guitarist Wilbert Longmire and Rusty Bryant’s tenor sax are on point all the way through.

[This track isn't from the 502 album but it will give you a sense of how great Marr was...]

 

Richard “Groove” Holmes—The Best of the Pacific Jazz Years (Pacific Jazz). Holmes is lightning fast but always clean and crisp. His own Groovin’ Time displays his virtuosity at high speeds, but he is equally at home with Gene Ammons' tenor sax. Holmes was a master of pedal bass and was skilled not only with single note lead playing, but with block chords as rhythm—a style that has its detractors, but I’m not one of them. Nothing displays the Hammond organ’s incredible power like a well-placed chord inserted at the proper place.

Wild Bill Davis—The Everest Years (Universal). Davis is considered the father of the jazz organ. Beginning in 1951, Davis was recognized as such even by the great Jimmy Smith, who was without doubt the most influential jazz organist of all time. This compilation shows why he was nicknamed “Wild Bill.” He rocks throughout, playing a heavy lead mostly with chords rather than with single notes—an organ style he created. Davis might also be the originator of the practice of vocal growling as it applies to the jazz organ, a style frequently employed by Jack McDuff and others. Listen to Blues For Joe and ‘Round Midnight.

Deep Purple—Shades of Deep Purple (Eagle Records/1968). Sometimes I just want to hear the Hammond cut loose. There’s nothing like this CD reissue of the original LP, which contains the rock remake of Joe South’s classic Hush, with Jon Lord’s screaming organ solo, arguably the best rock organ solo ever recorded. 

Bill Doggett—Wow! (ABC/1964). Doggett was one of the original Hammond players, having switched from piano to organ in 1951. While his biggest hit record, Honky Tonk Part 1, was more of a sax record than an organ side, Doggett was a master of the instrument and his style is all his own. What I particularly like about Wow! is that Doggett steps out more as a lead instrumentalist here than elsewhere.

[Here's the title track. I apologize in advance for the dopey video that accompanies the track...]

 

Junior Walker and the All Stars—19 Greatest Hits (Motown). Junior Walker is best known as a Motown-era tenor sax player and vocalist with numerous hit records including Shotgun, These Eyes and What Does It Take. While some of his hit records contain minimal organ, the instrument in the hands of Vic Thomas was an integral part of his sound in the studio and on the road.

Brian Auger—Auger Rhythms (Quicksilver). British organist Brian Auger is considered by many to be the father of acid jazz and is one of the most interesting and unique and versatile organists in the jazz pantheon. He has an extensive body of work spanning more than 50 years, including recordings with his groups—The Trinity, the Oblivion Express and Steam Packet, as well as his own solo work. 

[Here's Brian Auger, c. 1968...]

 

Dr. Lonnie Smith Trio—Foxy Lady (MusicMasters/1996). Smith plays the organ like a guitar. There is a guitar present, as John Abercrombie joins drummer Marvin Smith in making this work extremely well. This CD was released in 1996, and as soon as I heard it I took a marker and wrote across the front of the cover “Baddest of the Bad” just so I wouldn’t forget. 

[Here's Lonnie Smith's Foxy Lady...]

 
Melvin Rhyne—The Wes Montgomery Trio (Riverside/1959).This album marks the start of guitarist Wes Montgomery’s solo career. Here he’s joined by organist Melvin Rhyne, also an Indianapolis native. As album producer Orrin Keepnews observed in the liner notes, Rhyne’s music is without the heavy-handed chomping that burdens so many jazz organists.

Walter Wanderley—Rain Forest (Verve/1966). The bossa nova took off with vocalist Astrud Gilberto’s Girl From Ipanema in the early 1960s. There were other Brazilian artists, of course, including Luiz Bonfa, Joao Gilberto, Antonio Carlos Jobim and organist Walter Wanderley. Wanderley was one of the most unique organists of the period. He was super fast and lyrical with heavily applied, seemingly all-pervasive, reverb. Normally, this would be overbearing, but in the case of Wanderley, it augments rather than detracts from his music. 

[Here's the magnificent Walter Wanderley playing Summer Samba from Rain Forest...]

 

JazzWax pages: If you have any interest in the Hammond organ, Scott Faragher's Hammond Organ: An Introduction to the Instrument and the Players Who Made It Famous is the bible. The 389-page paperback features color photos and everything you'd want to know about the intrument, from models and speakers to the players. You'll find it here.

Scott Faragher: The Hammond (Pt. 1)

Few instruments excite music fans as much as the Hammond organ. Yet  everyone hears something different. The jazz fan hears a textured sound approximating that of a big band. The soul fan hears shades of gospel. And the rock fan hears a touch of funky soul. But where did this instrument come from and how did it evolve? [Pictured: Jimmy Smith]

In Part 1 of my conversation with Scott Faragher, author of the terrific new book The Hammond Organ: An Introduction to the Instrument and the Players Who Made It Famous, the author provides the instrument's accidental history and the artists who knocked our socks off with it:

JazzWax: What’s the origin of the Hammond organ?
Scott Faracher: Laurens Hammond [pictured] actually first invented the motor for electric clocks in the 1920s. He sold Hammond clocks by the thousands, but there was a conflict with a pre-existing German patent for a similar motor. So he needed another product to stay in business. Pipe and theater organs were popular then but too expensive for home use. Hammond decided to make an electric organ that would rival a pipe organ—but for a fraction of the price. His first model—the Hammond A—was rolled out in 1935.

JW: What made this organ special?
SF: It was portable and could be plugged into any wall socket. It also was versatile and loud—much more so than a piano. Its original intent wasn’t to be anything other than an electric instrument that duplicated the sound of a pipe organ. The first Hammonds were viewed as novelty instruments—much like a synthesizer was in the '80s—and were bought by George Gershwin, Lawrence Welk, Henry Ford and others. Bandleaders and jazz musicians soon began to embrace the new instrument as an efficient and cost-effective replacement for larger bands. 

JW: Some musicians were actually replaced by the organ, weren't they?
SF: That’s true. It happened to pianist Bill Doggett. In 1947, Doggett was hired to be the arranger and pianist for Louis Jordan. He replaced Bill Davis [pictured], who had left to study the Hammond. When Jordan rehired Bill Davis at triple the pay that Doggett was receiving, Doggett also decided to study the organ.

JW: Bassists were in trouble, too, yes?
SF: Yes. As the pedal bass became more popular, some
organ groups didn’t hire upright bassists. There was a backlash by acoustic bass players, but their efforts weren't successful. As the jazz organ came into its own in the late 1950s, a jazz organist who did not play his or her own pedal bass line was considered to be less proficient than those who did.


JW: How do the organ's stops work?
SF: The organ has a long history of producing sounds similar to those made by other instruments. The Hammond A came with factory-installed sounds accessed through reverse-colored preset keys. The organ also was designed so that various instrument sounds could be combined. But what distinguished the Hammond organ from subsequent rivals were its famous drawbars.

JW: What do these do?
SF: The drawbars enable organists to bypass the factory presets and customize their own settings, even changing them while playing. There were literally thousands of pieces of sheet music available for the Hammond with specific stop settings for a particular tune. Later, in the world of jazz and rock musicians, specific sets were lesser considerations as time passed, and organists simply used the drawbars to achieve the sound they wanted.

JW: Other organ brands emerged though.
SF: Yes, the Hammond organ’s success created a new market. Rivals such as Seeburg, Allen, Gulbransen, Conn and Lowrey were quick to release models. But since the way in which Hammond organs produced their various sounds was protected by patents owned by Hammond, other subsequent makers of electric organs had to create tones strictly through methods other than tone wheel generation. This greatly limited their versatility. It wasn’t really until the solid-state era that there was a level playing field. Even then, Hammond dominated the market.

JW: What were some of the other popular models?
SF: The first model, the Model A [pictured], was very similar in appearance to the B-3, which followed in 1955. But there were many Hammond models, including the large concert RT series, and the C series, generally considered church organs. There also were the self-contained A-100 series home organs. What’s more, there were tube and tone-wheel spinets, and a small single manual chord organ.

JW: When did the solid-state era begin?
SF: In 1974. That’s when the original B-3, C-3 and other tube/tone-wheel organs were discontinued. The technology of the transistor permitted organs to produce more sounds as well as the inclusion of built-in drumbeats and other accompanying rhythms. The B-3 continued to be the most popular shape and cabinet style.

JW: How did the B-3 become popular with jazz artists?
SF: Fats Waller had recorded jazz on an early Hammond, and is considered the father of jazz organ.

JW: What was Wild Bill Davis’ role?
SF: It was huge. He established the Hammond as a legitimate percussive jazz instrument by bringing it into the mainstream. Bill Doggett followed his lead as did Jimmy Smith, who was undoubtedly the most influential jazz organist. Many of the 1950s jazz organists— like Wild Bill Davis, Milt Buckner and Jackie Davis—recorded on pre B-3 organs, which lacked the distinctive percussion feature of the later B-3 model.

JW: How far back does the Hammond go in rock?
SF: The Hammond’s roots in rock are not as clearly defined. While there were specific jazz organists who brought the organ into marginal and then mainstream jazz, such was not the case with rock.

JW: How so?
SF: In the early days, the organ in rock was merely a background instrument. It had  greater or lesser prominence within what were often vocal recordings rather than instrumentals. For example, listen to Lou Christie’s Two Faces Have I, in which a chopping Hammond permeates the entire record. The organ also took a ride in his Runaway, another vocal record. And the organ was prominent in Barbara Lewis’ Hello Stranger and other vocal records of the period, such as Let’s Dance by Chris Montez.

JW: When does the organ first appear in hit rock records?
SF: Probably around 1960, although it could be argued that it was slightly earlier or even later. That’s because there were organ-based instrumental hits earlier, like Bill Doggett’s 1956 Honky Tonk Part I, although many people consider that single to have been more of an R&B record than a mainstream rock disc.

JW: Is there a date when the organ’s role in rock becomes more serious and less of a novelty?
SF: That would probably be 1962, when it was the driving force behind Joey Dee & the Starliters famous Peppermint Lounge album. In fact Carlton Lattimore had joined Joey Dee’s band in 1959 as an organist. And then there was Dave “Baby” Cortez, who had two instrumental organ-based hits—The Happy Organ (1959) and Rinky Dink (1962). Carl Holmes and the Commanders’ Twist Party at the Roundtable and The Kingsmen of Louie, Louie fame were both heavy on the organ.

JW: The organ also was big with the British bands, particularly those that wanted to add a touch of soul, yes?
SF: Yes. This is particularly true of Alan Price, organist with The Animals, Steve Winwood with The Spencer Davis Group on his driving Gimme Some Lovin intro in 1966. Even then however, the organ was still largely a background instrument—though one with a growing presence.

JW: What was the turning point?
SF: In 1966 with the Swinging Medallions’ Double Shot (Of My Baby’s Love) with its screaming organ, followed by Question Mark & The Mysterians' 96 Tears. The latter one really burned the organ into the teen listeners’ psyche. The organ was very much out front on both records.

JW: When did the Hammond name become a brand with listeners?
SF: Probably with Procol Harum’s Whiter Shade of Pale (1967). The U.S. version of the group’s first LP said on the back—“Matthew Fisher—Hammond Organ.” Here, the instrument was defined as a Hammond rather than a Vox or Farfisa. As the decade continued, groups like the Rascals, Vanilla Fudge, Three Dog Night, Steppenwolf, Smith, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown and others brought the Hammond Organ to the forefront.

Tomorrow: Scott Faragher's 10 favorite Hammond organ albums (there are a couple that even caught me by surprise).

JazzWax pages: If you have any interest in the Hammond organ, Scott Faragher's Hammond Organ: An Introduction to the Instrument and the Players Who Made It Famous is the bible. The 389-page paperback features color photos and everything you'd want to know about the intrument, from models and speakers to the players. You'll find it here.

JazzWax clip: Here's Wild Bill Davis in 1969 with Duke Ellington playing Satin Doll (thanks to John Cooper)...

 

Interview: Jimmy Wilkins (Part 3)

For Jimmy Wilkins and his brother Ernie, receiving a call from Clark Terry in 1951 to join Count Basie's new band in New York was an incredible stroke of good luck. Both musicians were jumping from one territory band to another trying to keep the paychecks coming. But big bands were folding fast.

Small swing groups weren't faring much better. In 1950, Basie had been working with a sextet that included Terry (tp), Buddy DeFranco (cl), Wardell Gray (ts), Freddie Green (g), Jimmy Lewis (b) and Gus Johnson (d). But the all-star group wasn't a big draw. Producer Norman Granz [pictured] told Basie to scrap the small-group effort and to start a new big band, which seemed counter-intuitive at the time. But Granz insisted and told Basie that if he did, Granz would sign him to his Clef label. So in 1951, Basie formed a big band and began hiring and rehearsing.  

In Part 3 of my three-part conversation with Jimmy Wilkins, the trombonist and bandleader talks about his three years with Basie at the dawn of the so-called New Testament band...

JazzWax: When you joined Count Basie’s band in New York in 1951, who was more excited, you or your brother Ernie?
Jimmy Wilkins: Me. Ernie didn’t like playing alto saxophone at the time but that was the only chair available. Basie already had Wardell Gray and Paul Quinichette on tenors, with Charlie Fowlkes on baritone. In the other two trombone chairs were two dear friends of mine—Matthew Gee and Mitchell “Booty” Wood. They were my heroes. It was a completely new band, except for the rhythm section, which had been with Basie.

JW: Who wrote the arrangements?
JWs: Neil Hefti wrote a half-dozen or so. I was delighted. Nothing was difficult and I was sight-reading. In ‘52, I ended up playing lead trombone. Booty’s wife wouldn’t let him go out on the road. So Basie added Benny Powell to take Booty’s place. Less than a year later, Henry Coker joined on trombone, and Joe Newman and Reunald Jones came in on trumpets. It was a brand new section.

JW: The other alto sax was Marshall Royal, yes?
JWs: That’s right. Ernie was still fussing about playing alto. But as the band started to take off, Ernie began contributing charts along with Hefti. Nat Pierce also wrote charts, like New Basie Blues.


JW: How were the Hefti charts?
JWs: They were great—Songs like Why Not?, Fancy Meetin’ You and others. Hefti used to send them to us while we were on the road—but without instructions on how to play them. One time we played one of his charts without instructions at Birdland. It was called How's It? or something like that. Clark [Terry] came up with the idea to phrase it slow, so we played the song laid back.

JW: Did Hefti hear it?
JWs: Yes, but he didn’t recognize it at first because it was so slow. Hefti wound up recording the song, but renamed it. I can’t remember the name. It had a more swinging tempo.


JW: Did Basie like Ernie’s charts?
JWs: Very much so. But Ernie wasn’t happy. Basie would announce Hefti's songs on the radio by saying they were by Hefti. But when we played Ernie’s songs, Basie never said his name. After we left the band in ’53, Basie apparently had said that he didn’t realize what he had had in Ernie.

JW: Who replaced you?
JWs: Johnny Mandel. He had come in to hear the band at Birdland a few times and brought a chart or two. Johnny said he thought I was great leading the section. Johnny's charts were great. They had a certain feel—laid back but with a good beat.

JW: The sax section changed as well.
JWs: Yes, Basie went through a period of personnel problems. If you weren’t proficient or didn’t have the personality Basie was looking for, you were gone. Basie got Joe Newman and Henry Coker out of Illinois Jacquet’s band. He also brought in Frank Wess, Frank Foster and Snooky Young.

JW: Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis was in there, too.
JWs: Oh yes. Lockjaw was a rompin’ player. He put all the groove he could into a tune. He loved his showmanship. I would holler “Lockjaw!” He loved it. Lockjaw and I were very good friends.

JW: Did he play with you when you started a band in Detroit?
JWs: Yes. After I left Basie, Lockjaw came to Detroit with the Harry “Sweets” Edison Quintet. I invited him over to our house for a barbecue. I made my own sauce, and he really snacked on those ribs. Lockjaw was a comical guy and loved to talk a lot of bull. He wasn’t as tough as he made out. He was just a nice guy who loved to be the center of things.

JW: Why did you leave the Basie band?
JWs: Because the money was too short. I had an offer from my uncle to manage his restaurant in Detroit— Webster’s BBQ. It was more pay, and I could save money by being stable.

JW: Why did he want you to manage it?
JWs: He wanted a relative handling the money rather than someone else. He wanted to get away on vacations, and he knew he could trust me. I managed the restaurant for a year and a half. Eventually a fire put him out of business for a couple of months. That's when I put a big band together.

JW: What did Ernie do?
JWs: Ernie stayed on with the band but left to stay in New York and write for Tommy Dorsey. Then he started getting commissions to write for different performers and bands. He was so busy so fast. He was always up all night writing charts. Everyone overworked him.

JW: What did you do after the fire?
JWs: I had had enough. I took an exam for the Post Office. I had gotten married in 1952, and the lack of a stable check wasn’t going to help me. I passed the test and worked for the Post Office in Detroit until 1981.

JW: What did you do then?
JWs: I had been leading a band on the weekends. It was a damn good band, too. We backed up Nancy Wilson [pictured], Billy Eckstine, Lou Rawls—all hot acts. Ernie sent me charts every now and then. They sounded good. That’s what took the band over. People would say, “There’s a band in Detroit that sounds just like Basie” [laughs]. Ernie also sent me some of the charts from Here Comes the Swingin' Mr. Wilkins as well as arrangements for Sarah Vaughan in the Land of Hi-Fi. He even wrote some special charts just for me.

JW: Did Ernie play with the band?
JWs: Ernie made a couple of gigs with the band. The band was excited when he came to play. They were pleased to see him. One time he had to borrow a baritone saxophone because the baritone player didn’t show up.

JW: You also played with the Funk Brothers, the house-band that backed singers on Motown recordings.
JWs: Yes, but I don’t remember specifically which ones. There were so many. They’d just put arrangements in front of us, and we'd record them. I know we did records with Stevie Wonder, The Temptations, Martha and the Vandellas, Smokey Robinson and everyone else.

JW: When did you move to Las Vegas?
JWs: In 1994. My wife and I moved there to get away from the winters in Detroit. They were too cold and hard. Besides, we had visited Vegas many times to see friends. After we moved out, a couple of musicians suggested I start a band with my large library of arrangements.


JW: Did you?
JWs: Yes, I knew all the musicians in Vegas. I called them up and started rehearsing. I got all the baddest cats. And I had Ernie’s charts and charts that Frank Foster had sent me, including Shiny Stockings, from before Basie even recorded it.

JW: Did you ever run into Johnny Mandel?
JWs: Yes, on a Jazz Cruise. I approached him and said, “Hi Johnny. Remember me?” He looked at me sort of quizzical at first. Then, as he began to realize who I was, his face warmed and he hugged me. He said, “Wow, it’s been a long time.”

JazzWax clip: Here's Count Basie's band in July 1952 recording Ernie Wilkins' classy arrangement of There's a Small Hotel, with Ernie Wilkins in the sax section and Jimmy Wilkins among the trombones. Be sure to dig that outro!