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Sadly, we lost guitarist Jim Hall in December. Here's Jim Hall: A Life in Progress, a 1999 documentary produced and directed by Bruce Ricker, written by Jim's daughter Devra Hall and edited by David W. Mester. Originally released by Rhapsody Films, you'll find copies of the DVD here or at eBay. Thanks to reader Ken Fletcher for sending along the link...
Dinah Shore has long been discounted as a '50s pop bore, which is terribly unfair. Part of the problem with her image is her sunny mass-market appeal and girl-next-door personna. But, in truth, she was highly regarded by all of the major singers and could swing with the best of them. Few could beat her natural charm and innocent sense of humor, especially in a duet setting. What's more, her intonation was spot on and her harmony was divine.
Now, on to nine Dinah Shore duets...
With Ella and Andy Williams...
With Bobby Darin and Andre Previn...
With Julie Andrews and Chita Rivera...
Jim Hall, a soft-spoken and sophisticated postmodernist jazz guitarist who recorded as a leader and with many of the most visionary artists on the East and West coasts, offering swinging rhythmic support and piercing melodic solos, died on December 10. He was 83.
Thanks to early friendships with prolific artists and a reputation for being a lyrical musical adventurer, Jim appeared on many of jazz's finest recording sessions. In the mid-1950s, his work with the Chico Hamilton Quintet blazed a new path for the jazz guitar, placing the instrument on an equal footing with the rest of the band as an improviser and musical conversationalist.
As Jim told me in a 2010 interview: "Many guitarists at the time played rhythm or supporting lines for leaders and soloists. I wanted to play so that my counterpoint and alternative melodies stood out clearly."
Among the many high points of Jim's career include recording sessions with Hampton Hawes, the Jimmy Giuffre 3, John Lewis, Bob Brookmeyer, Buddy Collette, Sonny Rollins (The Bridge) and landmark duo albums with Bill Evans and Ron Carter, and the magnificent quartet albums with Paul Desmond. Amazingly, these represent just a handful of Jim's storied discography. [Pictured above: Jim Hall and Bill Evans]
During several extensive phone conversations with Jim, I found him to be remarkably understated—aware of his gifts but rather mystified by the fuss over his exceptional playing style and recordings. To Jim, he was just doing what came naturally—expressing himself and taking risks with players who knew a thing or two about being out on a limb and converting the unknown into soaring artistic triumphs.
Jim was a master of taste. He knew how to let a note ring just long enough, how to peck away at a run, how to slide down to another note the way a ring slips onto a finger, and how to captivate listeners and take them along for a delicious ride.
Jim's guitar carries on conversations with parts of your soul you never knew existed. And once Jim gets going on a recording, it's pretty tough to take it off. It was as if Jim knew innately what he was up against—short attention spans and a desire for sonic action and modulation traditionally handled by horns or piano. But Jim knew that, if engaged properly, a listener would linger and be soothed—lulled into listening carefully to what he was trying to say on his instrument and be wiser for it. Like Bill Evans, Jim operated like a painter and knew all about seduction, color and space. In jazz, beauty never ages, and Jim left behind in his recordings a landscape of daring grace.
More on Jim: Here's my three-part interview with Jim from 2010:
Part 1...
Part 2...
Part 3...
JazzWax clips: The Chico Hamilton Quintet's Sleepy Slept Here...
The Jimmy Giuffre 3's Careful...
With Sonny Rollins on The Bridge...
With Paul Desmond on Samba Cantina...
The entire Intermodulation album with Bill Evans...
And with Ron Carter on Alone Together...
Saxophonist Charlie Ventura has gotten a bum rap. For too long he's been thought of as a Coleman Hawkins clone and his vast contributions to jazz and R&B have been overlooked or forgotten. His name no longer comes up in jazz circles and his recordings are rarely heard or praised—probably because he was a 78 rpm guy and didn't make too many albums in the LP era. Nevertheless, I can't think of the last time a serious jazz radio host featured him or record labels served up a box set. It's as if Ventura never existed. What a shame.
After spending the past two days listening to a large chunk of Ventura's recording output, I really don't hear much Hawk in his blowing—it's always Ventura's sound. Ventura brought enormous power and sensitivity to virtually every recording he made, and his technique and attack were extraordinary. He was a wonderfully sly, gruff player—zipping around melody lines like a kid on a fast scooter. You can hear how good he was on his recordings with Gene Krupa, with Jazz at the Philharmonic, fronting his own orchestras, with Jackie Cain and Roy Kral, and his small bop groups in the 1940s and '50s.
What's wild is that Ventura never seems to have made a bad record. And his confidence, bravado and stamina on the saxophone—not to mention his swing and time certainly influenced flocks of saxes on the R&B scene in the late '40s—guys like Maxwell Davis and Paul Williams. From my interviews with musicians who knew him, Ventura could be abrasive and callous. What else is new? He was competitive. Ultimately, Ventura's recordings speak for themselves and have plenty to say. [Photo above of vocalist Betty Bennett and Charlie Ventura]
Ventura was heard most often on tenor sax—but he also recorded extensively on baritone sax as well as soprano, alto and bass sax. But it's his baritone work that's most sublime. Ventura tended to work the lower register of his tenor, so his baritone tracks are, in a sense, Ventura with a cold—a much deeper, huskier sound that's just as agile and wily.
When I interviewed Marty Napoleon in 2011, he had only praise for Ventura...
"I loved Charlie. I was with his big band at New York’s Arcadia Ballroom. I was one of the singers with Lucy Reed. We used to do vocal duets. Al Cohn wrote an arrangement for me for a Sicilian song called Dicitencello Vuie. In English it means You Tell Them. I still can’t believe it. Al Cohn wrote an arrangement for me [laughs]."
Ventura's baritone sax recordings began in January 1946 in Los Angeles with the Gene Krupa Trio—Krupa, Ventura and Marty Napoleon. In May, the trio was at Carnegie Hall. But he was mostly noodling around on the instrument in these settings. Ventura starts to stretch out in October 1948 on his fabled National sessions, which also featured his brother Ben on baritone. Charlie Ventura can be heard on baritone on tracks like If I Had You and Once in a While. He was on baritone at the Royal Roost with the Charlie Parker All Stars in January 1949 and at his famed Civic Auditorium "Bop for the People" concert in Pasadena, Calif., in May 1949.
By 1951, Ventura was employing the baritone more frequently. On In a Jazz Mood, a Clef release, he even worked the bass sax. Throughout the '50s, Ventura used the baritone and bass sax often on Norman Granz-produced sessions. He also played baritone on two must-have albums—Plays Hi-Fi Jazz and The New Charlie Ventura in Hi-Fi in 1956.
In the '60s, Ventura recorded mostly on Jackie Gleason's Easy Listening albums, recording his final album, Chazz '77 (Famous Door), in 1977. He died in 1992.
Ventura's blowing style was bop hip. Though he's heard mostly on singles in the 78 rpm era, isn't it about time we cut the guy a break and gave him his due?
JazzWax tracks: You'll find a solid selection of Ventura in the 1940s and '50s on tenor and baritone on these albums...
JazzWax clips: Here are clips of Ventura that make my case...
Here's Tea for Two in March 1945, with Howard McGhee (tp), Charlie Ventura (ts), Arnold Ross (p), Dave Barbour (g), Artie Shapiro (b) and Nick Fatool...
Here's If I Had You in October 1948, with Norman Faye (tp), Bennie Green (tb), Charlie Ventura (ts,bar), Ben Ventura (bar), Roy Kral (p), Gus Cole (b) or Chubby Jackson (b) and Ed Shaughnessy (d)...
Here's Ventura on I'm Confessin' in 1951, with Conte Candoli (tp), Charlie Ventura (bar), Jimmy Wisner (p), Ace Tesone (b) and Chick Keeny (d). Sweet work by Candoli...
And here's Ventura in a clip with the Gene Krupa Band playing Leave Us Leap, from a short calledThe Drummer Man (1947). Ventura's on tenor sax in the white suspenders...
Long-time JazzWax readers know that each year at this time I pick my favorite vintage holiday album. To make the grade, the album has to be from the '50s or '60s and have a perfect mixture of pop, jazz and swing—with a dash of Rockwellian sentiment. It also has to do a swift job of taking us back to a time when stuffed animals were oversized, candy was homemade, black rubber snow boots had metal clasps and fireplace blazes had to be skillfully constructed.
This year, my choice is Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme's That Holiday Feeling! Released on Columbia in 1964 and produced by Robert Mersey, the album had multiple arrangers, with the orchestra conducted by Joe Guercio, who would become Elvis Presley's musical director and conductor.
This Steve & Eydie album is peppermint perfect from start to finish. The tracks are toasty and frosty, they are sequenced just right and there isn't a dud in the bunch. Just two honey-voiced pop artists singing and swinging about love and the holidays.
Footnote: Steve Lawrence and the late Eydie Gorme also recorded three tracks for Christmastime in Carol and Song—a rather uptight Arthur Fiedler project for RCA released in 1969 with opera singer Leontyne Price.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme's That Holiday Feeling! here as Happy Holiday. The problem is the 14 tracks are all out of order—something you can remedy by moving them around in your iTunes folder.
Here's how the tracks originally appeared on the album, with their arrangers in parenthesis:
JazzWax Vintage Holiday Album Hall of Fame: Here are my previous inductees...
2012—Duke Pearson: Merry Ole Soul (1969)
2011—Urbie Green: A Cool Yule Tide (1954)...
2010—Eddie Higgins: Christmas Songs (2004)...
2009—June Christy: This Time of Year (1961)...
2008—Jo Stafford's Happy Holidays: I Love the Winter Weather (1950s)
Click the covers to order...
