On Wednesday, in my post on pianist Horace Parlan and his solo recordings, I mentioned that he now lives in a care facility in Denmark. Guy Jones in Stockholm sent along the following email with more information:
"My understanding is that Horace Parlan isn't physically up to playing these days. He's living in a nursing home in Denmark and, although he's blind and wheelchair-bound, he goes to the occasional local gig. The photo (above) was taken in November 2015 in the green room of Copenhagen's Jazzhus Montmartre at a concert by the Harry Allen-Jan Lundgren Quartet. From left to right, the quartet members standing behind Parlan are Jan Lundgren (piano, Sweden); Kristian Leth (drums, Denmark); and Hans Backenroth (bass, Sweden). I believe Harry took the photo, but as you can see, the interior light was tough."
Then Jimi Mentis in Athens sent along a link to the full documentary, Horace Parlan by Horance Parlan. Here's the interview...
And Guy Jones sent a link to the BBC's A Portrait of Horace Parlan, an illuminating and touching audio interview (go here).
JazzWax reels. To buy the DVD Horace Parlan by Horace Parlan, go here.
For much of his recording career, pianist Horace Parlan functioned as a spirited accompanist. He played and recorded with bassist Charles Mingus in the late 1950s and then became a house keyboardist for Blue Note Records, appearing behind Lou Donaldson, Tommy Turrentine, Dexter Gordon, Stanley Turrentine and others. He also recorded with Tubby Hayes, Slide Hampton, Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Rahsaan Roland Kirk, to name a few. Along the way, Parlan recorded 31 leadership albums, mostly in trio, quartet and quintet settings. Lesser known are Parlan's four solo albums: Musically Yours (1979), The Maestro (1979), Jazzbuhne Berlin '79/'83 (1983) and Voyage of Rediscovery (1999). These albums were recorded in Copenhagen after Parlan relocated to Denmark in 1972. Today he lives in a Danish care facility. [Photo above of Horace Parlan by Tshi]
Parlan had a rough start. Born in Pittsburgh in 1931, he was deposited on the doorstop of a local orphanage. When he turned 5, he contracted polio, which left just two fingers of his right hand operable. After his adoptive parents suggested he play piano at age 8, Parlan threw himself into music, but he didn't feel confident yet about music as a career. So he enrolled at the University of Pittsburgh as a law student.
After 18 months, Parlan decided his true passion was indeed jazz piano. As Parlan told Stuart Nicholson in a 2001 JazzTimes interview: "I was not equipped to speak musically in the manner of Tatum or Peterson or any of the pianists I admire. I had to find a groove of my own. I think simplicity is the thing. I learned that from listening to Ahmad [Jamal], who is equipped to do a lot more than he does, but doesn’t choose to.”
In 1952, Parlan began to play at Pittsburgh clubs. But when he went to jam, many musicians told him to get lost, probably due to the disability in his right hand. For whatever reason, Charles Mingus heard something special in Parlan and asked him to join his group in 1957 when he was recording for the Bethlehem, Atlantic and Columbia labels. By the way, that's Parlan's piano on Mingus Ah Um (1959).
But as jazz shifted from acoustic to electric in the early 1970s and New York slid into a fiscal crisis, club and recording work dried up for many musicians over the age of 30 and the city became increasingly dangerous. Fed up with the stress of scuffling in New York, Parlan moved to Denmark.
"[Rock] was only part of the reason I left," Parlan told Nicholson. "The other part was social. I could feel a rise of overt racism and the atmosphere changed. There was a lot of crime in the streets, the increase of drugs. I was mugged twice in two years—just robbed on the street by teenagers—and when the same thing happened again on a street in Harlem, it triggered my decision. I decided it was time to leave.”
Parlan had visited in Denmark on a Scandinavian tour with South African pop singer Miriam Makeba (Pata Pata) in 1970. Concerts were booked there, but when Makeba developed throat problems, the performances were scrapped. During his down time in Copenhagen, Parlan nosed around and found a community of American jazz musicians that included Dexter Gordon, Ben Webster, Sahib Shihab and Kenny Drew. Tired of looking over his shoulder in New York, Parlan moved to an environment he called "peaceful" and "and an incentive to create."
The two solo albums recorded in November 1979 are an expressive testament to Parlan's relaxed comfort level and his enormous piano gifts. Both albums were recorded for the Danish SteepleChase label. Not only are they Parlan's most extraordinary albums but they also are among the finest and most poetic solo jazz piano albums ever recorded. Parlan's melodic explorations with his right hand are exceptional. The ear is further captivated when he brings in syncopation and chords, beautifully rendering the melody line. His five- and six-minute executions on these albums are constantly in flux and never repetitive. Like Horace Silver on ballads, Parlan was a master of drama and knew how to elevate the tension ever-to-slightly and release it in a sigh. These albums are must-owns.
JazzWax tracks: Miraculously, Musically Yours is available at Amazon as a digital download, CD and on vinyl here. The same goes for The Maestrohere.
JazzWax clips: Here's Memories of You from Musically Yours...
In the early 1960s, a growing number of lounges and clubs geared to young adults began emerging in Chicago. Some clubs such as the Playboy Club, which first opened in Chicago in 1960, pulled in white customers, while plenty of others were aimed at African-American audiences. All of these establishments began featuring hip jazz-soul trios, which offered a sophisticated, chill alternative to teen pop and R&B and the discotheque craze. The soul-jazz trio concept became so popular in Chicago and on LP that it soon spread easy and west throughout the country, especially as trios toured widely. [Photo above, from left, of Andy Simpkins, Bill Dowdy and Gene Harris of the Three Sounds]
Unlike most of the formal jazz trios of the period, the jazz-soul groups tended to be funkier and earthier, with a deep connection to R&B and the church. Among the pianists who led soul-jazz trios in the 1960s were Ramsey Lewis, Ray Bryant, Bobby Timmons, Les McCann, Mose Allison, Junior Mance, the Young-Holt Trio, Harold Mabern and Wynton Kelly. [Photo above, from left, of Andy Simpkins, Gene Harris and Bill Dowdy]
One of the most successful of all the jazz-soul trios was the Three Sounds. The group first featured pianist Gene Harris, bassist Andy Simpkins and drummer Bill Dowdy, with Kalil Madi and Carl Burnett on drums in later years. Harris combined the bluesy, dramatic piano of Red Garland, the delicate swing of Ahmad Jamal, the cyclonic attack of Oscar Peterson and the gospel feel of Ray Charles. The result was a wildly successful run for the Three Sounds from 1956 to 1973, during which they toured nationally and recorded extensively for Blue Note. [Photo above, from left, Andy Simpkins, Gene Harris and Bill Dowdy]
Now there's an addition to the Three Sounds' discography. Resonance Records has just released The Three Sounds: Groovin' Hard, a live album of 10 tracks taped at Seattle's Penthouse club between 1964 and 1968. The recordings were made by Jim Wilke during his weekly radio show, Jazz from the Penthouse, a club that ironically was on the ground floor of the city's Kenneth Hotel. I'll let Zev Feldman, who co-produced the new release with George Klabin, pick it up from here...
"From February 1962 to August 1968, Jim (above) hosted the weekly radio program, Jazz From the Penthouse, on Seattle's KING-FM. As a well-known radio personality in the Northwest, Jim developed a working relationship with Seattle's legendary jazz club, the Penthouse, and consequently was able to air live performances by a wide array of artists while they performed at the club. These performances were broadcast direct to the public, right as they happened. The shows not only went on the air live, Jim taped them, employing professional recording techniques. Over the years, Jim amassed an impressive collection of high-quality tapes... Among the recordings in Jim's archive that first captured George Klabin's attention was this group of performances made during four separate engagements over the course of five years by three different editions of the Three Sounds... All of us at Resonance are gratified to be able to present these recordings in conjunction with Jim and the family of Charlie Puzzo Sr., who founded and owned the Penthouse."
As for the musicians, here's what Zev told me: "We also always pay artists (leaders and sidemen) and make efforts to reach the musicians. There are occasions where we can't find someone but we make our best efforts. I will say that if we hadn't been able to do a deal with Gene's Harris's estate, this album never would have happened."
The music on this release is refreshing, solid, soulful and elegant. The year has just begun, but this is the best historic issue thus far.
JazzWax tracks:You'll find the Three Sounds' Groovin' Hardhere.
JazzWax clip: Here's The Night Has a Thousands Eyes from 1966 with Gene Harris (p), Andy Simpkins (b) and Kalil Madi (d)...
Today in the States, it's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, a national holiday since 1986 but not observed by all states until 2000. I thought it would be fitting to hear seven jazz tributes to the civil rights leader and the movement. Each of the jazz pieces that follows is a heartfelt work rooted in the church and King's spirit:
Here's John Coltrane playing Alabama on Ralph Gleason's Jazz Casual TV show in San Francisco. The song uses the cadence from Martin Luther King's speech in Sept. 1963 following the 16th Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four girls...
Here's Duke Ellington's King Fit the Battle of Alabam', from My People Original Soundtrack recorded in Aug. 1963...
Here's Grant Green's The Selma March from His Majesty King Funk from May 1965, featuring Harold Vick (ts), Larry Young (org), Grant Green (g), Ben Dixon (d) and Candido Camero (cga)...
Here's Blue Mitchell's March on Selma in July 1965 from Mitchell's Down With It, featuring Blue Mitchell (tp), Junior Cook (ts), Chick Corea (p), Gene Taylor (b) and Aloysius Foster (d)...
Here's Billy Taylor playing I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free from 1967, with Ben Tucker (b) and Grady Tate (d)...
Here'sMartin Luther King Jr. by Cecil Payne in Dec. 1968 following King's assassination in April 1968. The track is from Payne's Zodiac album, with Kenny Dorham (tp), Cecil Payne (bar), Wynton Kelly (p), Wilbur Ware (b) and Albert "Tootie" Heath (d)...
And here's Oliver Nelson's Martin Was a Man, A Real Man, from Black, Brown and Beautiful in 1969...
In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed actress Lauren Graham of TV's "Gilmore Girls" on her wild childhood growing up with her dad after her parents divorced. Her mom went off to study to be a painter and then sang with a rock band (go here). Meanwhile, Lauren and her dad moved around quite a bit before settling in Virginia.
Also in the WSJ, I interviewed Adam Grant, professor of management and psychology at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and the author of Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World. We talked about his favorite song, Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire (go here).
Shelly Manne. Last week, I heard from the ever-fabulous Flip Manne, Shelly Manne's wife. Here's her email (with her permission, of course)...
"Happy New Year! Regarding that clip of Shelly with the Jackson 5 that you posted, I was backstage with him that night at the 1974 Grammy Awards. He was on a turntable stage that was supposed to turn around as soon as they came down the ramp but it temporarily malfunctioned. As a result, he was late turning and had to come out playing with no idea where they were in the music. Shelly had amazing timing and it always saved him."
Denny Zeitlin. Next Thursday, you'll be able to hear a live concert by piano legend Denny Zeitlin on your computer from anywhere in the world. KCSM, the San Francisco Bay Area jazz station, will present Remembering Miles Davis, with Denny playing solo piano. It's sure to be hugely exciting and is part of Jim Bennett's In the Moment show. Tune in on Thursday, Jan. 19 at 9 p.m. (PST). You'll find the show on the radio in the Bay Area at 91.1-FM—or on your computer by going here.
Stan Hasselgard. Following my post on the Swedish clarinetist who had a fatal auto accident at age 26 in 1948, I heard from Michael Bloom of Michael Bloom Public Relations...
"Your comments on the dangers of driving great distances in those days really resonated with me. While on leave from the Navy in the late '40s, my dad embarked on a crazy cross-county driving marathon with a couple of his buddies, going from Baltimore to the West Coast. While traversing Missouri, the driver (not my dad) nodded off, went off the road and crashed. Amazingly no one was seriously hurt, but the car was totaled. They gave the car to a farmer who had given them a ride to the nearest town that had a bus station. The farmer said he planned to use the car engine to run a water pump for his fields. It was one of several times throughout his life that my dad cheated death. I used to kid him about having nine lives, like a cat. He passed away of natural causes in 2012."
Los Angeles' Red Car saga. Ryan Fabian (above), who hosts the Terrifying World site (go here), is smart and hilarious, and delivers history in a wonderful way. Here's his take on The Life and Death of Public Transit in Los Angeles...
George Wallington radio. On Sunday, Jan. 15, "Symphony" Sid Gribetz will host a five-hour "Jazz Profiles" radio show on WKCR-FM in New York celebrating the pianist and composer George Wallington. You can tune in from anywhere in the world by going here. Sid's show runs from 2 to 7 p.m. (EST) and is always an education.
As Sid notes: "Wallington was one of the legendary pianists of the bebop era but never achieved great fame. With his early retirement from a musical career, he remains a more obscure figure in jazz history. However, he was an especially swinging pianist and inventive composer who deserves continued attention."
Elis Regina. Pete Michaels sent along this marvelous behind-the-scenes video of the famed Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina (above) recording session of 1974 that included the captivating Waters of March duet. For more on this session and Elis's tragic end, here's a terrific article from the Los Angeles Times.
Stephen Sondheim. Director Raymond De Felitta sent along this clip of Stephen Sondheim in May 1961 on CBS's American Musical Theater hosted by singer-actor Earl Wrightson. What's most stunning is the articulate and scintillating way in which Sondheim discusses his lyric for West Side Story and Gypsy without a single pause to think. Brilliant...
What the heck.Here are surviving members of the Winstons in 2009 performing their 1969 hit, Color Him Father...
Oddball album cover of the week.
I get the concept—a flute so sweet models in sheer tops swoon. But what's up with the poodle? And while we're at it, that's some left leg on the model. The days before airbrushing.
To fully appreciate the power and bop of Gene Krupa's band and his drumming in 1947, I thought the full short of Drummer Man would do the trick. It features Carolyn Grey on vocal, Tommy Lucas on alto sax, Bill Baker on piano and one heck of a trumpet section that likely featured John Bello, Ray Triscari, Gordon Boswell and Dick Dale...
Buddy Greco, a solid swinging jazz pianist, a supper-club pop vocalist and probably the last surviving member of Benny Goodman's "Undercurrent Blues" bebop band of 1948-49, died January 10. He was 90.
Born in Philadelphia, Greco had his work cut out for him from the start. His father was one of the country's leading opera critics and his mother was an accomplished accordionist. Greco made his professional debut at 5 on Philadelphia's WPEN, where he spent the next 10 years as an actor, singer and pianist. Following two years with Benny Goodman starting in 1948, he was hired in 1950 by NBC-TV as the male vocalist on Broadway Open House. The show lasted a year but launched the careers of many famous pop singers through their exposure in household living rooms.
Able to sing from the piano effortlessly, Greco formed a trio and began working popular lounges throughout the country. The difference between Greco and most of his cocktail-hour peers such as Matt Dennis, Bobby Troup and Page Cavanaugh is that he was younger looking, urban and more comfortable in front of a TV camera.
Greco's piano playing was especially confident and right on time. He was only in his early 20s when he played with Goodman, which says a great deal about his talent and self-assuredness. Of course, Goodman did wind up with two talents for the price of one, since Greco played piano and sang with the orchestra.
In the LP era, Greco had a smooth, middle-of-the road voice that could include annoying hipster shtick that was endearing to Las Vegas and Palm Springs lounge audiences. Greco tended to junk up swinging numbers by neurotically adding an "ah" to the end of virtually every lyric line. For example, words like "Malibu" became "Malibu-ah" and "drinking wine" became "drinking wine-ah." For sophisticated listeners, the ring-a-ding-ding thing grew tiresome fast.
Depending on the song, his baritone voice seemed to bear traces of Jackie Paris, Sammy Davis Jr., Matt Dennis and Nat King Cole (Greco liked to drop down to a note instead of up). Eventually, his finger-snapping swinger approach was leveraged more effectively by Bobby Darin.
But what Greco lacked in honest emotion on peppy material he made up for with a warm, silky delivery on ballads. On slow numbers such as The More I See You or Blame It on My Youth, he ditched the scotch-and-soda affectations and focused solely on delivery and phrasing. It was on torch songs that Greco became a singer worth listening to.
As for his mighty piano, it's important to note that in 1966, Greco was at the keyboards in Buddy Rich's powerhouse band. The pair also starred together in a 1967 summer replacement TV series called Away We Go along with comedian George Carlin. In Las Vegas, Greco was beloved by audiences and entertainers. The rest of the country knew little about him after the 1960s as Greco made fewer and fewer appearances outside of the Nevada and California deserts.
JazzWax tracks: Among Buddy Greco's rock solid vocal albums are My Buddy (1960), Big Band and Ballads (1966) and, my favorite, Songs for Swinging Losers (1961), arranged by Chuck Sagle in the style of Nelson Riddle. I have other faves, but these should get you started.
JazzWax clips: Here's Buddy Greco in 1963 on the Ed Sullivan Show playing Fly Me to the Moon. A superb pianist...
Here's Buddy Greco on the Rosemary Clooney Show singing Ain't She Pretty...
Here's Buddy Greco on the Rosemary Clooney Show singing The Blue Room...
Buddy Bregman, a West Coast big-band arranger who could write with sensitivity and swing, and spent much of his career orchestrating music for leading jazz-pop singers, television and the movies, died Jan. 8. He was 86 and had been suffering from Alzheimer's disease.
Bregman was a nephew of songwriter Jule Styne, which is how he managed to record Gypsy with Annie Ross so early. In short, Styne gave him the music first, before song pluggers began pushing the show's catchy tunes toward big-name singers. The Ross album was recorded just before the Broadway musical opened on May 21, 1959.
Born in Chicago, Bregman began his music education at 5, performing his first piano recital at 12 at the city's Baldwin Hall. By 15, Bregman could play clarinet, saxophone and flute. Two years later, he became the youngest arranger hired by NBC when he signed on to arrange and conduct The Jack Haley Show.
A flurry of radio, TV and movie credits followed, and by the early 1950s he was the musical director of NBC-TV's top-rated Eddie Fisher Show. While Bregman arranged occasional albums for Ella Fitzgerald, Anita O'Day, Bing Crosby and other singers, they were jobs of passion since by the late 1950s he was found largely in the world of television and the movies.
I've always loved Bregman's arrangements. He had the clout in Hollywood to pull together the best West Coast recording studio artists, and the results always had punch and kick. If all he ever recorded was Anita O'Day's Pick Yourself Up for Verve, that would have been enough for me. Of course, Bregman arranged much more. Here are a bunch of my favorites:
Here's Anita O'Day singing Bregman's arrangement of You're the Top in Dec. 1955 (the trombone section here featured Milt Bernhart, Lloyd Ulyate, Joe Howard and Si Zentner)...
Here's Ella Fitzgerald singing Bregman's arrangement of Anything Goes in 1956 on the Cole Porter Songbook (dig the rundown with brass, tagged at the end by a strings figure to close it out)...
Here's Count Basie playing Bregman's arrangement of There Will Never Be Another You in 1956 with Joe Williams singing...
Here's Ella Fitzgerald in1956 singing Bregman's arrangement of Mountain Greenery on her Rodgers and Hart Songbook...
Here'sKicks Swings from Swinging Kicks in 1956 with Conte Candoli (tp), Frank Rosolino (tb), Bud Shank (as), Jimmy Giuffre (bar), Paul Smith (p), Joe Mondragon (b) and Stan Levey...
Here's Anita O'Day singing Bregman's arrangement of Man With a Horn from Pick YourselfUp with Ted Nash playing gorgeous obbligatos on the tenor saxophone...
And here's Annie Ross singing Bregman's arrangement of Small World from Gypsy, featuring Conte Candoli and Pete Candoli (tp), Frank Rosolino (tb), Herb Geller (as), Richie Kamuca (ts) or Stan Getz (ts), Bill Perkins (bar), Russ Freeman (p), Jim Hall (g), Monty Budwig (b) and Mel Lewis (d)...
In November 1948, U.S. immigration laws required foreign nationals seeking residence and employment in the States to leave the country and re-enter, re-setting the legality of their stay under a new visa. If Swedish clarinetist Stan Hasselgard wanted to fulfill a new record deal with Capitol Records, he'd have to update his visa. One of the fastest and most direct ways to do this was to fly down to Mexico City and fly back, having the visa re-stamped with a new date at customs. [Photo above of Stan Hasselgard and Wardell Gray in 1948]
Hasselgard came to jazz fame in the States in 1948, when Benny Goodman took him under his wing. Hasselgard, in his mid-20s, first made a series of recordings in the U.S. in 1947 in Los Angeles with the Johnny White Quartet before recording for Capitol in December with Red Norvo (vib), Arnold Ross (p), Barney Kessel (g), Rollo Garberg (b) and Frank Bode (d). The following February, he recorded with vocalist Billy Eckstine for the Armed Forces Radio Service. It's unclear if this is when he first encountered Eckstine's wife, June. [Photo above of Stan Hasselgard and Benny Goodman]
In the spring of '48, Hasselgard's Norvo recordings came to the attention of Benny Goodman, who saw in him an eager and polished student and a way for him to learn bebop or feature Hasselgard playing bop in the Goodman style. Hasselgard's extensive touring and recording dates with Goodman through the early fall led to the Capitol solo offer.
In New York on Nov. 18, Hasselgard wrapped up a V-disc recording session featuring Barbara Carroll (p) Chuck Wayne (g) Clyde Lombardi (b) Mel Zelnick (d) and Jackie Searle (vcl). Several days later, on Nov. 22, Hasselgard left New York in June Eckstine's car. By then, June and Hasselgard were romantically involved. June was reportedly heading to Chicago to have her husband sign divorce papers. Billy was appearing in Chicago at the time. [Photo above of Barbara Carroll, Clyde Lombardi and Chuck Wayne]
Also in the car, according to Billboard in 1948, were Milt Ebbins, Hasselgard's mananger, and Bob Redcross, Billy Eckstine's driver and road manager. Unclear is whether Hasselgard actually planned to fly down to Mexico City from Chicago or whether he and June were going to drive on to Nevada to marry or if he was planning to travel to Los Angeles with Ebbins to sign his Capitol deal. [Photo above of June Eckstine]
What is known is that in the early morning hours of Nov. 23, June was behind the wheel just outside of Hammond, Ill., Hasselgard was in the passenger seat, and Redcross and Ebbins were in the back sleeping. Why the car wound up more than three hours south of Chicago instead of heading north after reaching Indianapolis is unclear. At some point, the car skidded—either because June hit ice, fell asleep or, as Billboard reported, a trailer truck forced the car onto the shoulder, causing the car to flip over. A combination of the three is possible as well.
In the days of limited driving skills (most people learned to drive as adults), overly fast vehicles (many could soar over 100 mph with ease) and zero safety features (there were no seat belts or air bags then), driving long distances at a single stretch could be treacherous. [Photo above of Billy Eckstine and his wife, June]
When the car flipped, Hasselgard and Eckstine were thrown from the vehicle. Hasselgard, 26, was killed instantly and Eckstine suffered a broken arm and lacerations, Redcross broke a toe and Ebbins was apparently unharmed. [Photo above of Stan Hasselgard on New York's Part Ave. in 1948]
Whatever action June was supposedly due to take against her husband in Chicago was put off. According to Jet magazine in 1953, Billy rushed to her side at the hospital after the accident. She held off filing for divorce until 1952 and in 1953, she wound up with a $23,750 alimony payment (about $215,000 in today's dollars).
Given Hasselgard's limited number of solo recordings, it's unclear how exceptional he was or how important a jazz figure he would become had he lived. Clearly, Hasselgard would have had serious competition in Buddy DeFranco, and it's unclear how many clarinetists the market could support at a time when the reed instrument was fast becoming antiquated. Perhaps most important of all were Hasselgard's own limitations. According to guitarist Barney Kessel in Ira Gitler's Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s, Hasselgard couldn't read music. "I noticed that he did not read music," said Kessel. "He was completely self-taught, and I've been told—because I don't know the clarinet that well— by clarinetists that he played many incorrect fingerings, in which he just lipped the clarinet and just found a way to get these notes out. It was not really the right way at all, but he made it come out right." [Photo above of Stan Hasselgard with bassist Walter Page, Count Basie and Jo Jones in 1947]
Listening to Hasselgard's final four leadership recordings in November 1948, it's clear he had a warm bop sensibility. Interestingly, his quintet was similar in some respects to the quartet formed that year by Buddy DeFranco, George Shearing, John Levy and Denzil Best. in 1949, DeFranco and Shearing would go their separate ways, signing with different record labels, and Shearing would form his famed quintet.
While it's doubtful Hasselgard would have become a standout clarinetist in the years that followed, when reading and writing music would become all important, he was developing a keen bop-swing style when his life was cut short in November 1948. Just another jazz death in an auto accident caused by an exhausted, inexperienced driver. Eight years later, Nancy Powell, pianist Richie Powell's wife, would take the wheel of the car carrying her husband and trumpeter Clifford Brown. Also en route to Chicago, Nancy lost control of the car on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and all three were killed.
JazzWax tracks: You can hear Stan Hasselgard's California sessions here. You can download Hasselgard's group playing Chuck Wayne's Cotton Tophere from Hasselgard's last session on Nov. 18, 1948—or buy the CD here.
JazzWax clips:Here'sCotton Top. Interesting how it's taken considerably slower than the George Shearing Quintet would record it in January 1949...
And here's Hasselgard playing Swedish Pastry with Red Norvo and the group mentioned above in 1947...
Nat Hentoff, the dean of jazz essayists who in the 1950s applied modern feature-writing techniques to musicians who up until that point had been treated as little more than hip novelties by many trade journalists, died of natural causes on Jan. 7. He was 91.
As an intellectual, Nat was many things, including a critic, a civil libertarian, a writer keenly tuned into the Supreme Court and an unbridled champion of free speech and the U.S. Constitution. But it was his jazz writing that left the deepest mark on both the music and jazz fans and those merely curious about jazz. Nat had a way of elevating the musician to the same level as authors of literary masterpieces, prominent architects and Broadway playwrights and composers. He did this by adding his feelings and treating jazz as high art. [Photo above of Nat Hentoff and clarinetist Edmond Hall at the Savoy Club, Boston, in 1948]
In this regard, Nat's jazz essays often were laced with passion and views without laying it on thick. Nat had an ability to explain with poetic feeling why music or musicians were essential, and there was an elegance and eloquence to his jazz features that not only won you over but gave you a fine appreciation of the artists he was writing about. In some respects, Nat invented the so-called "new journalism" a good 10 years before writers began inserting themselves into major profiles of celebrities and the twists and turns of popular culture. [Photo above of Charles Mingus and Nat Hentoff]
To read Nat's books and liner notes is to be led by the hand into the jazz world and introduced to people he knew intimately, not casually. Through his words, readers had a sense of who these musicians were, not just what that were playing.
On a personal note, Nat was a huge JazzWax fan. Whenever I posted one of my jazz-legend interviews, I could expect a call or voicemail from Nat extolling the exchange and the miracle of what I had done to preserve the artist's legacy. In 2010, when Nat's book, At the Jazz Band Ball: Sixty Years on the Jazz Scene, came out, he called me to interview him at Barnes & Noble. Nat also had a great deal to do with my book, Why Jazz Happened, being written and published. When Nat heard what I had in mind after calling on another matter one day, he insisted I call his editor first at the University of California Press. Nat also wrote a wonderful blurb for the book when it was published. A call from Nat meant the world to me, since it was Nat's liner notes that had drawn me into the music back in the 1960s. Nat was inspiring and motivating, and a tireless admirer and champion of greatness. We also were both alums of Boston's Northeastern University and had written for the Northeastern News. As Nat often said, we were both in the passion business. It was an honor to know him and to be able to tell him how much his words and spirit had influenced my own passion for jazz and approach to jazz prose. [Photo above of Nat Hentoff in his home office]
Here's my 2009 interview with Nat:
JazzWax: Do you listen to jazz while you write? Nat Hentoff: It’s very interesting you ask that. Most of what I write these days is so depressing, like the continuous genocide in Darfur and all kinds of other stuff, that I find I must stop once in a while and listen to jazz. Otherwise I'd be in a booby hatch. I always remember what Merle Haggard [pictured] told me. Merle knew a lot about jazz and could play it when the venue was right. Merle once said. "Sometimes I get so far down that nothing will pick me up except music."
JW: What were you just listening to? NH: John Pizzarelli. I'm interviewing him soon for a series of TV interviews that are being recorded at the Blue Note club in New York for eventual broadcast on PBS. I get the transcripts of my interviews so I can write about the subjects. I had heard John in the past, but I had no idea how good this guy is. You want a definition of swing? Just listen to John Pizzarelli. He lifted me way up just before you called.
JW: So which came first, Nat Hentoff or jazz? NH: [Laughs] The music that came first for me goes back at least 2,500 years. That's the cantorial music I heard when I was a kid. Back then I had to be in our orthodox shul on the Jewish high holidays, and I was so taken by the sounds and the passion of the cantor. I knew something of what he was singing. Most of the time it seemed like he was arguing with God. Later I learned that what he was doing was undertaking the practice of taking one note and singing variations on it. That got to me.
JW: When did jazz first hit you? NH: When I was 11. I was walking down Boylston St., the main street in Boston. In those days, record stores had PA systems so you could hear the music outside the stores. And I heard something so striking that I shouted out loud. You didn’t often do that in Boston back then. I rushed in and asked the clerk what was playing. It was Artie Shaw’s Nightmare. Years later I found out that Artie came up with that theme from hearing a theme used by a cantor.
JW: You hung out at the Savoy Cafe on Massachusetts Ave. when you were still in your teens, yes? NH: Yes. The people who ran the Savoy were very kind. I was underage, but they let me in. That’s how I got to meet so many jazz greats. Eventually, WMEX, a local radio station, let me announce live broadcasts there and play records on the air. But I was a regular at the Savoy even before I was on the station. Once I started on the radio, I used to interview jazz greats. One time I was interviewing Coleman Hawkins. I told him that I understood the feeling in Charlie Parker's playing but that I had grown up with Johnny Hodges and Benny Carter and didn't quite get Bird's approach.
JW: What did Hawkins say? NH: He asked if I had one of those Charlie Parker records. I did. So we put it on in the studio, and he made me listen to everything Bird was doing. When Hawk was finished, I completely understood why Bird was special. It was a very valuable lesson.
JW: You were a bright kid. After graduating from Northeastern University in Boston, you studied at Harvard. NH: Well, I didn’t study at Harvard long. I enrolled because the university had started the first major curriculum in American Civilization. I was fascinated by the subject, and there was a wonderful professor there who initiated the program. But something was drawing me away. One day when I was in Widener Library, another professor of mine came up to me. He had listened to me regularly on WMEX.
JW: What did he say? NH: He said, "What are you still doing here? It seems what you care about most is the music and that you’d be better off doing it."
JW: Did you take his advice? NH: Not immediately. That came soon afterward. While writing a paper on James Fenimore Cooper, the 19th century historical novelist, I found out that the guy had never even met any Indians. I liked what Cooper had written in his fiction, but he seemed like a fraud. I thought, how could this guy write about a subject with which he had no first-hand knowledge? Sidney Bechet was playing at the Savoy Cafe that night, so I closed my books and went down there to hear him. That marked the end of my Harvard ambition. I decided there and then that I had to have a day job that involved writing about jazz.
JW: Soon drummer Jo Jones befriended you and became your mentor whenever he came to town. Do you think he sensed that jazz's story was in your hands? NH: Oh, I think Jo was smarter than that [laughs]. Jo was a missionary about the music, like Art Blakey later. Jo figured it was his job to keep jazz writing and the music itself free of imperfections. He didn’t like people who were on junk, for example. He knew I was beginning to write seriously about jazz. So he sat me down one night at the Savoy and gave me a lecture. He said, “You gotta be careful about what you do. Know what you're doing and get to really know the musicians, because that’s what the music is all about.” His comments were invaluable. He was telling me that for my writing to be accurate and credible to my audience, I had to get close to the participants and involve them and their stories.
JW: Jo was quite a role model. NH: Oh, yes. My favorite Jo Jones story was about Max Roach. Jo was notorious for showing up suddenly at other drummers' gigs when he wasn’t working. Max was playing one time in Chicago, and when he looked out in the audience, there was Jo. “Oh my god,” Max said to himself. So he played everything he could think of on his drums. Afterward, Max waited for Jo's magisterial response. Jo came up to Max and said, “All I could hear was your watch” [laughs].
JW: Eventually you returned to your studies, this time at the Sorbonne in Paris, in 1950. NH: That was on a Fulbright Scholarship. What I wanted to do was study the contrast between T.S. Eliot and Paul Valery. They both looked at everything in life in such a different way and so brilliantly.
JW: How did it go? NH: I must confess that I never wrote about them. When I got to Paris, I did go to the Sorbonne. But I also went to the jazz clubs and the movies. That's how I learned to speak bad French. Of course, I never got to the subject that brought me there in the first place. I was too captivated by the jazz and overwhelmed by the beauty there. I was in Paris for about a year.
JW: When you returned to the States, who gave you your big break as a jazz writer? NH: I started out as a stringer because I was hanging around at the Savoy and other Boston jazz clubs. A stringer is someone who writes regularly for many different publications. During this period I got to know producer Norman Granz. He'd call me often to let me know when he was bringing Jazz at the Philharmonic to Boston. We eventually became friendly. Contrary to general knowledge, Norman wasn't brusque. He actually was very nice to me. At one point in 1953, Leonard Feather, who had been the New York editor of Down Beat, decided to leave the magazine. I don’t remember why. So the magazine was looking for a replacement. Norman knew the publisher and had enormous pull since he advertised in the magazine.
JW: What did Norman do? NH: He called the publisher and said, "Why don’t you try this guy Hentoff?" That was the big difference, and I was hired.
JW: Was Down Beat a comfortable fit for you from the start? NH: Yes—until I did a terrible thing in 1957.
JW: What did you do? NH: First let me give you some background. It was a jazz fan’s dream to work at Down Beat. I spent all my time on the music and in the clubs. I’d interview the guys and hang out with them as far as I could. Eventually I got to be close friends with many of them. I grew very friendly with [Charles] Mingus from the first days he came to Boston with Billy Taylor. Duke [Ellington] also was very kind to me. He was another one of my mentors. I learned something very interesting about interviewing through Duke.
JW: What? NH: Duke was always very helpful when I was writing about him and his band. But one time I was too sick to come to an interview we had scheduled and asked if we could do it by phone. So we did, and I encountered a very different Duke.
JW: What changed? NH: When we had met face-to-face in the past, Duke had always been "on." He was an entertainer and a huge personality, so that was to be expected. But over the phone, there was a transformation. Without having to be "on," Duke was very serious and open. Duke was such a profound guy. He knew so much history, not just about the music. That’s how I got a lot of the material for my books.
JW: Did your phone experience with Duke motivate you to interview others on the phone? NH: I don’t do all my interviews by phone. But I prefer it when the person I’m interviewing isn't "on." Using the phone reinforces what I’m trying to do—get to the truth.
JW: So what did you do wrong at Down Beat? NH: Everything was going well. By 1957 we had offices in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles. But we did not have any blacks on staff in any capacity. And much of what we were writing about originated with these folks. One day we needed a receptionist or someone who did more than that. A woman came in. She was very bright, and I hired her. She was black. The boss in Chicago, the owner, was furious.
JW: What did he say? NH: He never said anything. But when I came in on Monday after I made the hire and after working all weekend on copy, I received a message it was to be my last week at Down Beat. I had hired the woman without consulting headquarters.
JW: So you left. NH: I didn’t leave. I was pushed. The same thing happened after 50 years at the Village Voice recently. I was fired. I was so surprised by the move by the Voice. Afterward I was reading my own obituaries in newspapers and magazines. But the Voice firing turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me.
JW: How so? NH: It led to a senior fellow position at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C. The bread isn't the same but it's pretty close. It’s very stimulating place to be for a libertarian and strong civil liberties advocate like me.
JW: How did you get jazz greats to trust you early on? NH: [Laughs] I don’t think there’s a formula for that. I was always so surprised they were willing to open up and talk.
JW: What do you think your secret was? NH: For years I’d see reporters come in with lists of questions to ask. They had to get through that list, no matter what. You’d never do that with jazz artists. Forget the questions. Listen. Duke used to say to me, "I don’t want people listening to my music to analyze what the chords are or what we’re doing with the rhythms. I want them to open up to the music." It's the same thing with interviewing. I just listen, and the questions come from that.
JW: So musicians felt you were laid back, without the outward pressure of an agenda? NH: I don’t know what the reason is, but I’m grateful for it. If they hadn't been so eager to tell me what they really felt about the music and their lives, I never would have written anything worthwhile.
JW: Did you ever write something that caused an artist pain? NH: I used to do record reviews for Down Beat and was very pleased when I no longer had to do that. I often had to review a lot of stuff that I didn't like. It bothered me that I was affecting some people’s livelihoods when I was unhappy with a recording. What I've done ever since leaving Down Beat is to write only about recordings that move me. That makes me feel less guilty.
JW: What did jazz musicians see in you? NH: The only answer I have appears on the back of one of my books, American Music Is. It's a quote from Dizzy [Gillespie], whom I knew very well over the years: "Thank god for Nat [Hentoff], who places the soul of the musician above that of his art." I can’t live up to Dizzy's blurb, but it struck some chord in Dizzy.
JW: In some ways you're the first jazz intellectual. NH: Oh, no. Think about musician and writer Andre Hodeir [pictured] in France. And Charles Delaunay, whom I knew when I was in Paris in 1950. Charles gave me a driving tour of the city and told me an incredible story. Charles was already an established jazz writer and jazz discographer by the time the Nazis occupied France in 1940. During the war he was a member of the Resistance. One day he was rounded up by the Gestapo. While waiting in his cell to be interrogated, Charles was visited by a Gestapo official. The guy said to him, "You had the second trombonist wrong in the Lucky Millinder band in your discography." The Nazi was a closet jazz fan and let him go. Jazz had kept Charles alive.
JW: But in the States... NH: Here you had many great writer-thinkers, including Ralph J. Gleason. My god, he was so bright in so many different fields. So I‘d have to decline your description of me.
JW: Was the competition tough among jazz writers back in the 1950s? NH: There weren't that many of us at the time to have much competition. Besides, I never compete with anyone. As a reporter, I don’t believe in exclusives. If your job is to get the news out, I'm happy to help. I’ve often given leads to reporters on other newspapers. I’ve even shared things with reporters if I knew things they didn't. I never viewed jazz writing as a competitive sport. I may not have agreed with other writers and critics, but I never saw them as rivals in the pure sense.
JW: Who was your hardest interview? NH: Hmmm. That’s easy, now that I remember. It was Benny Goodman.
JW: Why? NH: Because everything I’d ask him, he’d say, “Well, what do you think?” Obviously the guy knew his horn. But compared to Artie Shaw, I don’t think I knew much about his own soul. I knew a lot about his technique. But Goodman was odd like that. You couldn't read him. Just when you assumed he felt one way about you, he'd do something that would surprise you. For instance, just after I arrived in New York from Boston to work for Down Beat in the early 1950s, my phone rang. When I picked it up, the voice on the other end said, “This is Benny Goodman. I need a tenor saxophonist for my band. Who would you recommend?" I was surprised.
JW: So who did you offer up? NH: Zoot Sims [laughs]. Zoot was perfect. What's funnier is I think Benny hired him.
JW: We’re you ever afraid or intimated by a subject before an interview? NH: No. I don’t go into an interview as a combatant, so I have nothing to be anxious about. An interview shouldn't be about the writer. It should be about the subject.
JW: Do you regret anything you’ve written? NH: One time I was writing too much about Charlie Venutra, and I think it hurt him economically.
JW: What do you mean "economically?" NH: I mean his records kept coming out, and I kept saying the same things in different ways: "Why doesn’t this guy stop and reflect rather than shouting all the time?"
JW: Did you ever talk to Ventura about your advice or columns? NH: No, fortunately [laughs]. But if I did and he had hit me, he would have had a legitimate reason [laughs].
JW: Did you ever pan anything that turned out to be great? NH: Well, it took me a while to figure out what Bird was doing. Dizzy less so. And I never fell into the "sheets of sound" thing John Coltrane was playing. I knew where he was coming from though. He was hurt by all the critics who were put off by his approach in the early 1960s without understanding what he was trying to do. So I tried to be careful about that sort of thing.
JW: Whose potential did you spot early? NH: I was one of the first to really dig [Thelonious] Monk. At the time, even some of the critics were saying, "How much of the piano does he really know?" and "What is he saying?” But he reached me immediately. That may have helped when Blue Note recorded him. I was writing about Monk from the start. It makes you feel good if you get great artists known and help them make some money.
JW: Which jazz musicians of the 1950s have been largely forgotten but still matter? NH: Lucky Thompson comes to mind. Don Byas comes to mind. And some of the guys in Duke’s band, like Tricky Sam Nanton and Rex Stewart. Rex was an extraordinary musician and, by the way, a very good writer. You don’t hear his name mentioned much anymore. And Pee Wee Russell, who was one of the most original jazz musicians of his time. The guys on the front lines of the bands he was in surely wondered how he was going to get out of a chorus.
JW: Any others? NH: On Count Basie's band, we hear a lot about Prez [Lester Young], of course. But what about Buck Clayton and Dicky Wells? There are plenty of great musicians who don’t get attention any more. But I’m glad to see one thing. Back when I started, common wisdom said that jazz was a young man’s game. Bix [Beiderbecke] had died young. Bunny Berigan had died young. Today it's different. There are musicians in their 80s—like Clark Terry, Frank Wess, Jon Hendricks, James Moody—still touring and playing all over the world. That's heartening.
JW: Which musician's words continue to echo most in your head? NH: I guess Charles Mingus. I learned so much from him—not only about the music. What I remember most from Mingus is him saying, "The problem in our society isn’t race. There is a race problem, for sure, but the real problem is that most of us get so caught up in the rhythms of work—work we don't like to do—and we lose who we are." I’m relaying his words badly, I'm afraid. Charles said it much better.
JW: What's the biggest joy you've derived from your close friendship with Charles Mingus? NH: In addition to the delight of any friendship, I'd have to say hearing his creative process evolving. Every so often I’d be sitting at my desk, and at about 10 a.m. or so my phone would ring. When I'd answer, I'd hear some music. Well I knew whose music it was. Mingus had that signature sound that you could dig right away. After about 10 minutes, Mingus would come on and ask, "I just taped this. What do you think of it?” What a privilege that was. It was like Beethoven calling to ask, "What did you think about my sonata?" [laughs].
JW: Is there a link between jazz and justice? NH: Oh sure. When Max Roach was teaching at the University of Massachusetts, I was auditing a class there. Afterward we were talking. He said, "You know, what [jazz musicians] do, each of us as individuals, is listen to one another very carefully to make this thing work. And out of that process comes a whole that has its own identity. That's exactly what the U.S. Constitution is all about." How right he was. Thinkers coming together to create something that has enormous purpose.
JW: You played a role in Roach's album, We Insist!: Freedom Now Suite, didn't you? NH: Marginally, and it was such an honor. Max had played the material originally at Art D'Lugoff's Village Gate. I was with Candid Records at the time [1960]. So I called Max up on a hunch and asked if he was going to record it. Max said no, that other record labels weren't interested. I said how about recording for Candid records? He said, "Great." Wow, what a session that was.
JW: Do you think that jazz improvisation and justice-seeking are similar? NH: Interesting... How so?
JW: That jazz improvisation is a form of unrestrained truth-seeking and that justice and those who seek it are on a similar mission? NH: Oh my lord, yes. Supreme Court Justice William Brennan, whom I knew well, turned me on to a lecture that Justice Benjamin Cardozo had given. Cardozo had criticized a lot of judges for being "pharmacists." I'm paraphrasing, but Cardozo said, "You give justices a formula and they go by it. The human being is never there in their thinking." With Brennan, the human being was always there. Great justices like Brennan are always interested in the people. When you're interested in the people, you listen, just as jazz musicians do. Brennan always wanted to track cases from the beginning, to find out who the people involved were and what the essence of a case was.
JW: As a writer, did you feel a connection with Brennan and Cardozo? NH: Yes. That’s how I've always written about jazz. I want to get to know who the people are and what they're doing and feeling and what the music is saying from their point of view.
JW: Would judges and Supreme Court justices be better served if they listened to jazz? NH: I think so. It’s the music of the people, of the soul. You get a clearer sense of motivation through the music.
JW: Does objectivity become threatened when jazz writers become close friends with musicians? NH: That’s interesting. Whitney Balliett [pictured] and I used to talk about that all the time. Whitney was one of the very few people who could put the music to words, so the words sang. Whitney used to say that he didn’t want to get to know jazz musicians well because he felt he wouldn’t have the necessary objectivity to write about them.
JW: Balliett must have had a change of heart somewhere along the way. NH: Yes, he changed his mind, of course. His interviews with some of these people are superb. Personally, I don’t see the problem. If you’re saying. "I dig this person's music and I want to learn more," what’s the big deal? How else are you going to learn more about artists and their art than by talking to them? What is objectivity after all?
JW: But did you ever worry that you’d be inclined to give a bad record a good review because you knew the artist behind the art? NH: No, never. I listen to the fact that it’s my byline and if I say something that I don’t really believe, what am I here for? They used to teach objectivity in journalism school. Today this has shifted rightly to fairness, not objectivity. The writer's tone and perspective has to be included. When I taught journalism, I used to say if you read The Nation, you need to read The Weekly Standard. You need know what everyone is saying. The same is true of jazz. You have to listen to everything. That's the only way you can be fair.
JW: How do you want Nat Hentoff’s jazz writing to be remembered? NH: [Laughs] Probably something like this: "You could hear the voices of the musicians in just about everything he wrote."
JazzWax clip:Here's the Ahmad Jamal Trio in 1959 on CBS playing Darn That Dream, with a bearded, pipe-smoking Nat Hentoff nodding along to the music while talking to his wife in the company of jazz legends...
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Anatomy of 55 More Songs," "Anatomy of a Song," "Rock Concert: An Oral History" and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax has won three Jazz Journalists Association awards.
