JazzWax

Video: Jimmy Giuffre Trio

From 1957 to 1959, reed player Jimmy Giuffre led a revolutionary trio. It featured Giuffre on clarinet, tenor sax and baritone sax; guitarist Jim Hall; and a series of bass players, including Ralph Peña, Jim Atlas, Red Mitchell, Ray Brown and Wilfred Middlebrooks. Even Bob Brookmeyer took a turn at the piano and valve trombone. What made the jazz trio special was its passion for Americana folk and counterpoint with a sophisticated spin. All members of the group were daredevil players—with Giuffre blowing ribbons of fascinating cool-jazz concepts, Hall pecking out penetrating chords and swinging, jagged lines, and Peña (and other bassists) unrolling a thick, rubbery platform. 

In 1959, jazz impresario Norman Granz organized a European tour that included the trio. In Rome, at the Teatro Adriano, they were captured in action by Italian television. Here's the trio playing Giufffre's Four Brothers...

JazzWax tracks: If you dig this trio, you'll find The Complete Jimmy Giuffre Trio, a four-CD set, here and here.

The Lost Bobby Scott

If I could sing and accompany myself on piano, I'd want to sound like Bobby Scott. The pianist and singer-songwriter (1937-1990) started out in the early 1950s as a superb jazz pianist and composer-arranger (Bethlehem, Verve, ABC-Paramount), shifting to pop-rock and R&B in the early 1960s (Mercury and Atlantic) before switching to pop and jazz (Columbia) mid-decade and assorted labels in the 1970s and '80s. As a composer, Scott was prolific. He is probably best known for co-writing two major Billboard Hot 100 hits—A Taste of Honey and He Ain't Heavy, He's My Brother (the Hollies).

Everything Scott recorded in the jazz and pop space is worthy. But for some strange reason, he has been forgotten today by many labels. Like Don Elliott and Gary McFarland, Scott was impossibly talented and extraordinarily tasteful. In some regards, I suppose Scott's fate was a shifting of the times. The music changed, leaving enormously gifted artists from the 1950s like Scott without an audience. A shame, considering he is the unheralded king of the saloon song.

Today, the web gives artists a fighting chance to build an audience. Back in the late 1960s and '70s, you were washed up without a new album, a booking agent and lots of friends in the radio and television business. Whatever the reasons for Scott's dimming light today isn't important. I'm here to tell you that he was an enormous vocal talent and a "compleat musician," to quote the title from one of his LPs.

Among the albums that are sadly out of print are his three Verve releases (Sings the Best of Lerner and Lowe, Serenata and Plays the Music of Leonard Bernstein), though I hear these may be available as digital downloads soon. Also missing are his Atlantic albums (The Compleat Musician and A Taste of Honey) his four Columbia releases (Star, From Eden to Canaan, Forecast: Rain With Sunny Skies and My Heart in My Hands) and his album for Warner Bros (Robert William Scott). Others also are unavailable for assorted labels.

This is unacceptable, and I hope someone out there makes these albums available again. Now that I've stated my case, let me back up my claims:

Here's Wand'rin' Star from Sings the Best of Lerner and Lowe...

Wand'rin Star

Here's Scott playing piano and singing I Won't Cry Anymore from My Heart in My Hands...

I Won't Cry Anymore

Here's I Only Miss Here When I Think of Her from Star...

I Only Miss Her When I Think of Her

Here's Wild World from Eden to Canaan...

Wild World

Here's Don't Let It Go to Your Head, which went unreleased...

Don't Let It Go to Your Head

Here's Nothing's Going to Change, also unreleased...

Nothing's Going to Change 

JazzWax tracks: To fully fall in love with Bobby Scott's voice and piano, download For Sentimental Reasons here. Don't think about it. Just do it. If you need an incentive, here's That Sunday, That Summer...

That Sunday, That Summer

Hod O'Brien (1936-2016)

Hod O'Brien, a ruggedly handsome and soft-spoken bebop pianist who came to jazz in the late 1950s, left jazz for 10 years in the 1960s and early 1970s, only to return to the music, becoming one of the most highly regarded and tasteful pianists of his generation, died on Nov. 20. He was 80.

Born in Chicago in 1936, Walter "Hod" O'Brien was deeply influenced by boogie-woogie at age 8. Lessons followed from a teacher at his grade school. Fortunately for O'Brien, his teacher looked favorably on boogie-woogie and promised to teach him if he also worked hard at scales and other classical basics. Unfortunately, the boogie-woogie lessons turned out to be sheet music.

But O'Brien's parents had friends who knew how to improvise while playing boogie-woogie, which inspired O'Brien to stick with the piano. Between ages 8 and 18, O'Brien took lessons on and off, and he picked up swing, Dixieland and bebop jazz styles starting at age 15 after hearing Jazz at the Philharmonic recordings.

When O'Brien was 18, he began playing professionally while attending Connecticut's Hotchkiss School, Ohio's Oberlin Conservatory (for three months before illness forced him to be hospitalized) and at the Manhattan School of Music (above, today) between 1956 and '57. He didn't complete his degree there either, largely because of the growing availability of work at New York clubs.

One of his earliest steady gigs in New York was with bassist Oscar Pettiford who led a quintet featuring trumpeter Red Rodney, Sahib Shihab on alto and baritone saxes, and drummer Earl "Buster" Smith. Featured on Piano Jazz with Marian McPartland in 2008, O'Brien credited the jazz-loft scene in New York in the late 1950s with giving him an opportunity to play and jam with leading musicians. "A lot of us got discovered in lofts by some of the working musicians who would come by after gigs," he told McPartland.

One day, while visiting The Pad, a jazz club near Sheridan Square in Greenwich Village, O'Brien was asked by performing vibraphonist Teddy Charles to sit in. Saxophonist Hal Stein, a friend of O'Brien, was playing in the group. After the gig, Charles, who was producing for Prestige Records at the time, invited O'Brien to record on a session he was lining up with trumpeters Donald Byrd, Art Farmer and Idrees Sulieman. The 1957 album would be called Three Trumpets and it put O'Brien on the map.

In the early 1960s, O'Brien played with Phil Woods, Freddie Hubbard, Charlie Rouse and Lee Konitz. He also played regularly with his trio at New York's Five Spot, the Jazz Gallery and Cork and Bib, where he was the house intermission pianist. By 1964, as club and recording work slowed with the rise of pop rock and soul, O'Brien enrolled at Columbia University, where he studied mathematics, a subject he found "fascinating." Before long, math proved to be over his head and he switched his major to psychology to complete his undergraduate degree.

After he graduated, O'Brien worked in computer programming at New York University between 1969 and '74. O'Brien later regretted withdrawing from the music scene for 10 years, telling McPartland that in retrospect, he lost momentum. By the mid-1970s, O'Brien returned to jazz, playing and recording regularly with older jazz artists who were holding fast to the acoustic form during the more commercially successful fusion decade.

O'Brien continued to record and teach, eventually marrying vocalist Stephanie Nakasian, with whom he recorded a stunning album, Dedicated to Lee Wiley (2009). In the 2000s, O'Brien battled cancer and continued to perform even while undergoing treatment.

As we can hear in virtually everything O'Brien recorded, taste isn't something that just arrives but is a credo that artists must be passionate about. O'Brien was a sensitive soul who was often at his best as a sideman, particularly when accompanying guitarists such as Rene Thomas, Joe Puma and Doug Raney, with whom he performed extensively while in the Netherlands and Belgium in November 1988.

O'Brien was often likened to bop-piano forefather Bud Powell, but to my ear, his ability to shift effortlessly between bop and a lusher, romantic style was probably closer to pianist Sonny Clark. He will be missed, especially to younger jazz musicians who saw him as a link to jazz's golden era.

JazzWax clips: Here are a handful of of my favorite Hod O'Brien clips:

Here's Who's Who from Three Trumpets (1957) with a superb Hod O'Brien intro...

Who's Who

Here's O'Brien backing guitarist René Thomas on Like Someone in Love (1960)...

Like Someone In Love

Here's Detour Ahead from O'Brien's Opalessence (1985)

Detour Ahead

Here's Will You Still Be Mine from So That's How It Is (1997)...

Will You Still Be Mine

And here's On a Misty Night from I'm Getting Sentimental Over You (2006)...

On a Misty Night

A special JazzWax thanks to David Langner.

Weekend Wax Bits

So sorry for being unable to post my usual Weekend Wax Bits last weekend. I was in Toronto and crushed for time. Let me make it up to you with an action-packed roundup this week...

My Barnes & Noble talk was a blast. Around 50 friends (old and new) came to hear me and Rob Hyman talk about the book and Cyndi Lauper. I was so touched by the outpouring of love and support. A special thanks to Rob for generously coming up from Philadelphia to join me. He's a great guy.

My Toronto event two days later was over the moon. I put together an extensive playlist to illustrate the evolution of songs I referenced during my talk, and the audience of 60 at the studios of JAZZ.FM91 loved it. While standing, I had my laptop on a glass table about belt-high, which allowed me to perform as speaker and DJ. The Q&A after my hour-long presentation lasted an hour prior to book signing. A terrific evening and a wonderful audience. [Photo above by John Rowlands]

Surprise! In the Toronto audience was John Rowlands, the famed rock photographer. After the talk, John was at the end of the book-signing line, so when he reached me, we were able to sit and chat. After I signed his and Jo-Ann DaPonte's book, Jo-Ann took a photo of me holding one of John's iconic images of David Bowie as John held his signed book aloft...

Listen while you read. I wrote Anatomy of a Song with hopes you'd listen to the songs while reading. If you wish, dig all 45 songs for free at my Spotify jukebox (go here).

Media roundup. Anatomy of a Song remains a strong seller in the U.S., Canada and Europe. In addition to doing about 20 radio and print interviews over the past two weeks, here are a few TV and radio clips:

WSJ Cafe—I was on the WSJ's Lunch Break Cafe with Tanya Rivero (go here)...

Hoda Kotb—co-host of the Today show, invited me on her fabulous Sirius XM radio show to talk about Anatomy of a Song (go here). The show was remixed to bring my voice up.

Bill Goldstein recommended Anatomy of a Song on his closely followed weekly "Bill's Books" segment on Today in New York (if you wish, move the time bar to 2:40) (go here).

Please support JazzWax and buy Anatomy of a Song. To purchase for yourself or as a holiday gift, go here in the U.S., here in the U.K. or here in Canada. Thanks for your kindness!

So flattered. Around the world, readers are sending me selfies taken while holding up their copy of Anatomy of a Song. Here's a handful (keep 'em coming!)...

Sydney Finkelstein of Dartmouth's Tuck Business School and author of the terrific Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent.

Guy Jones, the general manager of Fog Arts Records in Stockholm.

Mattias Nilsson, Swedish jazz pianist (go here) in Malmö, Sweden.

In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Paula Abdul on growing up with a range of physical limitations, including collapsed lungs and a broken windpipe at birth and hips that turned inward (go here). She overcame them all, but years of injuries along with car and plane crashes left Paula on pain meds. Finally, she was finally able to overcome the pain and the meds thanks to hard work and a team of doctors. Now she's preparing for a dance tour in 2017.

Also in the WSJ, I interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Sharon Olds on why she danced to Aretha Franklin's Respect before leaving for the hospital to give birth in 1969 (go here). Her new book, Odes, was recently published.

Alan Warner sent along the following note: "Here's my dog-eared but precious copy of a Capitol catalog put out by EMI in England just after the label purchased Capitol and switched from UK Decca."

Two Oscars. John Rowlands and Jo-Ann DaPonte sent along this clip of pianists Oscar Peterson and Oliver Jones in 2004...

In New York this week. On Thursday, Dec. 1, catch jazz pianist Leslie Pintchik and her trio at Jazz at Kitano (at the Kitano Hotel, 66 Park Avenue at 38th St.). Leslie will be joined by bassist Scott Hardy and drummer Michael Sarin. Reservations are strongly recommended. Sets start at 8 and 10 p.m. ($17 cover, $20 minimum). I have a full afternoon of book radio interviews that day, but I'm going to be there for the 8 p.m. set. I wouldn't miss it and neither should you. For information and reservations: (212) 885-7119.

YouTube Cocktail! Carl Woideck sent along black-and-white footage of the Capitol Records Tower in 1956 when it opened. Let me fix you a YouTube Cocktail...

Watch this (with the sound muted)...

While listening to this...

What the heck. Here's James Moody's original Workshop in 1948...

And here's Eddie Jefferson's vocalese rendition of Workshop set to Moody's solo in 1954...

Oddball album cover of the week.

Here's another one of those "little women" album covers, this one in the pop-rock era, circa late 1960s. They are so lightweight that their steps leave the keys unmoved. Here's a tart taste of Waxman's sound...

Mose Allison: Club Date

On Dec. 29, 1989, pianist-singer Mose Allison appeared on Club Date, a San Diego TV show. He was joined by Gary LeFebvre on alto sax, Gunnar Biggs on bass and Dave Coleman on drums. Sadly, Mose died earlier this month (go here). [Photo above of Mose Allison in London in 1986 by AvalonRex/Shutterstock]

Here's Mose at the top of his game on Club Date in '89...

A special JazzWax thanks to Jimi Mentis.

Lifting Thanksgiving Spirits

In past years on Thanksgiving, I provided you with a dinner menu of sorts using the titles of jazz songs. This year, it appears the Washington Post liked the concept so much they used it across multiple music genres. No worries. Time to switch the holiday-themed post anyway. So I've decided to boost your spirits with a handful of wonderful TV variety-show clips. What they all have in common is their ability to make you smile and laugh:

Here's Once in a Lifetime, a special episode of the Judy Garland Show in 1962 featuring Garland, Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin...

Here's An Evening With Nat King Cole taped in London by the BBC in 1963. Absolutely captivating, and what a suit!...

Here's Burt Bacharach on the Andy Williams Show in 1968. Williams always exceeds expectations. He was a remarkable pop singer and always made it look easy...

Here's Petula Clark and Peggy Lee in 1970 on the NBC special, Petula...

Here's Martha Raye, Peter Lawford and Judy Garland in 1964 on the Judy Garland Show singing pop rock hits of the day (Raye runs away with it, hands down)...

And here's Frank Sinatra and Dinah Shore in the late 1950s...

Artie Shaw: Pied Piper

On a Sunday afternoon in July 1946, CBS's Columbia Workshop broadcast The Pied Piper of Hamelin, featuring a story adaptation and music by Artie Shaw. The national radio show broadcast from Columbia Square in Hollywood was aimed at young kids home from school on vacation. Weeks later, Shaw's label, Musicraft, brought together Shaw and the broadcast's ensemble to re-tell the story on three 78s, which were released as an album that fall as a holiday item. 

The Pied Piper recording in July was sandwiched between Shaw's famed Get Out of Town (June) and For You, For Me, For Evermore (August) sessions for Musicraft with Mel Torme on vocal. Interestingly, Shaw didn't play much on the six Pied Piper sides. They were devoted largely to narration of the tale about the enterprising piper and his musical influence on Hamelin's vermin. But Shaw did play bits of his Pied Piper Theme with his Gramercy Five quintet as well as some solo clarinet work, and he led his large orchestra through original incidental music.

Here's how the three 78s stacked up (interesting configuration of sides, probably for seamless radio airplay):

Record #1
Side 1—The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Story adaptation and original music by Artie Shaw) Artie Shaw and his Orchestra
    Narrated by Harry Von Zell
    Arthur Q. Bryan - Mayor
    Edwin Max - Pied Piper

Side 6

Record #2
Side 2—The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Story adaptation and original music by Artie Shaw) Artie Shaw and his Orchestra
    Narrated by Harry Von Zell
    Arthur Q. Bryan - Mayor
    Edwin Max - Pied Piper

Side 5

Record #3
Side 3—The Pied Piper of Hamelin (Story adaptation and original music by Artie Shaw) Artie Shaw and his Orchestra (5631)
    Narrated by Harry Von Zell
    Arthur Q. Bryan - Mayor
    Edwin Max - Pied Piper

Side 4

Here's the Gramercy Five recording of The Pied Piper Theme in 1949, featuring Don Fagerquist (tp), Artie Shaw (cl), Gil Barrios (p), Jimmy Raney (g), Dick Nivison (b) and Irv Kluger (d)...

And here's the 1954 version with Shaw's new Gramercy Five, featuring Artie Shaw (cl), Joe Roland (vib), Tal Farlow (g), Hank Jones (p), Tommy Potter (b) and Irv Kluger (drums).

JazzWax tracks: Artie Shaw's The Pied Piper of Hamelin album from 1946 was never released on CD and is extremely rare. But after a bit of detective work and web searches, I found a free download of a file featuring all six sides in one continuous flow. Go here to Kiddie Records Weekly and scroll down four rows. On the right is the Artie Shaw album. Click on "launch stream" and download. Double click on the downloaded file and it will automatically jump into your iTunes library under "Internet Songs."

Happy Thanksgiving!

A special JazzWax thanks to Les Johnston

Count Basie: High Voltage

Over the course of five years, Chico O'Farrill (above) arranged part or all of 11 Count Basie albums—from Basie Meets Bond in 1965 to High Voltage in 1970. Born in Havana, O'Farrill attended a military academy from 1936 to 1940 in Georgia where he began playing trumpet. He returned to Cuba after graduation and concentrated on arranging. In 1948, he moved to New York where he arranged for Benny Goodman's bop band that recorded for Capitol. With the rise of the mambo at the start of the '50s, O'Farrill wrote Latin-jazz charts for a range of bands.

In the early 1950s, O'Farrill released a series of 10-inch albums for Norman Granz. Then in 1955, he returned to Cuba before moving to Mexico City in 1957, where he worked for eight years in Mexico's recording and TV studios. In 1965, he was back in New York arranging for television as well as big bands, including Count Basie's.

His last album for the Basie band, High Voltage (MPS), has just been re-issued as a download by Edel Germany GmbH. The explosive band featured Gene Goe, Sonny Cohn, Waymon Reed and Joe Newman (tp); Grover Mitchell, Buddy Morrow and Frank Hooks (tb); Bill Hughes (btb); Bill Adkins (as); Jerry Dodgion (as,fl); Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis (ts); Eric Dixon (ts,fl); Cecil Payne (bar); Count Basie (p); Freddie Green (g); George Duvivier (b) and Harold Jones (d).

Too often jazz critics have written off Basie's recordings after the early 1960s, incorrectly believing that the band's peak was accompanying Frank Sinatra on It Might as Well Be Swing in 1964. Hardly. The Basie band recorded swinging albums throughout the 1960s and early '70s arranged mostly by O'Farrill and Sammy Nestico.

What makes High Voltage special is O'Farrill's charts and Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis's tough tenor-sax solos. Throughout the late 1960s and early '70s, Lockjaw added a gruff, lyrical bite to the post-Sinatra Basie band. His bluesy take-charge reed work was flavorful and exciting, adding an element of drama. Also in the album's favor are swift standards that hadn't been recorded by Basie previously. In addition, four musicians in the band weren't regulars during this period: trumpeter Joe Newman, trombonist Buddy Morrow, and alto saxophonists Bill Adkins and Jerry Dodgion.

To this day, O'Farrill remains one of jazz's most un-sung arrangers and among Basie's best. He knew exactly when to add heat and swing, and he had an innate sense of how to get the Basie orchestra's sections talking and your feet tapping. O'Farrill died in 2001.

JazzWax tracks: You'll find the newly re-issued version of Count Basie's High Voltage at iTunes and here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Together, with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis on tenor saxophone...

Together

And here's If I Were a Bell...

If I Were a Bell

My Love for the Capitol Tower

I've had a crush on the Capitol Records Tower in Los Angeles since the early-1960s, when I first saw it on the slip jacket of a Nat King Cole 45. As a kid, I loved the Jetsons quality of the building, with its stout, cylindrical facade and silver spike at the top. It looked like flying cars could park on every level.

Hearing the Cole single as a child, I just assumed that's where all music came from. I also recall wondering whether it was a real building or just an imaginative drawing of one. And if it was real, I figured that Cole lived there.

This past Saturday, I finally had the chance to express my admiration for the building—which I've long viewed as Los Angeles's Eiffel Tower. No other building in L.A. better expresses the city's sunny, futuristic vision and its passion for music across multiple decades. As many JazzWax readers know, I write occasionally on architecture for The Wall Street Journal, with a focus on the buildings and architects I admire most. So it was particularly gratifying to track down the Capitol Records Tower's original architect, Lou Naidorf (above), who is now 88, to talk about how the iconic building came to be. Several surprises came out of that interview.

In case you missed my "Masterpiece" column in the WSJ's Review section over the weekend on the tower, you'll find it here.

And here's a fun promotional film for the tower in 1958 (two years after the building opened) narrated by Tennessee Ernie Ford with a vocal voice-over by Sue Raney...

George Shearing + Erroll Garner

Let's do something different this weekend. I thought I'd feature wonderful videos of two jazz pianists playing each other's most famous hits. Here's George Shearing playing Erroll Garner's Misty...

And here's Erroll Garner playing George Shearing's Lullaby of Birdland...