Since we're on a bit of a flute kick, let's end the week with Belgian flutist (and saxophonist) Bobby Jaspar. In the following video clip, he's performing in Cannes, France, in July 1958 with Donald Byrd (tr), Walter Davis Jr. (p), Doug Watkins (b) and Art Taylor (d). They're playing a contrafact on I'll Remember April—a contrafact being a newly invented melody on top of the chord changes of an existing established song.
Dig Jaspar's swinging flute and the impeccable quality of Byrd's muted trumpet, not to mention the regal bop played by Davis, the taut bass lines of Watkins and the drive of AT's brushes. Here's the clip (for my European friends, who may find the U.S. clip inoperable, I suggest typing "Donald Byrd Quintet + Cannes 1958" into the YouTube search bar)...
On Monday and Tuesday, May 7 and 8, in 1956, singer Patti Page was in Hollywood recording a jazz-pop album arranged by Pete Rugolo with a crowd of the finest jazz studio musicians in town. Produced by Bob Shad for EmArcy, Mercury Records' jazz subsidiary, Patti Page in the Land of Hi-Fi was likely recorded in the ground-floor studios at the newly built cylindrical Capitol Tower. Signed by Mercury in 1947, Page had 42 hits between 1948 and '54. In 1955, the hits continued, and at the time she was host of TV's Patti Page Show, with Oldsmobile as the sole sponsor. On the 12-inch album side, she was transitioning well into the new format.
For those young readers unfamiliar with hi-fi, it was short for "high fidelity," a record-industry marketing term popular in the mid-1950s letting the mass market know that the new 12-inch pop album had better sound than anything they had experienced previously. EmArcy made five albums in its "Land of Hi-Fi" series from late 1955 into '56, featuring Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, Page, Georgie Auld and Cannonball Adderley.
Page was likely the initiator of her EmArcy session or jumped at the opportunity Shad extended. Weary of syrupy songs like Go On With the Wedding and Mama From the Train, Page viewed the jazzy date as a chance to sing with Rugolo's unusual orchestral style and a cool-cat band with enormous punch. What kind of punch are we talking about?
On the May 7th session, the band comprised of Maynard Ferguson, Conrad Gozzo, Pete Candoli, Chico Alvarez, George Werth (tp); Frank Rosolino, Milt Bernhart, Kai Winding, John Halliburton, Bob Burgess (tb); John Graas, Vincent de Rosa (fhr); Clarence Karella (tu); Bud Shank, Harry Klee (fl,as); Bob Cooper, Georgie Auld (ts); Chuck Gentry (bar); Rocky Cole (p); Howard Roberts (g); Joe Mondragon (b); Larry Bunker (d); Bernie Mattison (perc); Jack Costanzo (bgo) and Pete Rugolo (arr,cond). See what I mean?
The Hollywood demands on top musicians in the age of the LP and television were so frenzied in early 1956 that just a day later on May 8, there were significant changes in the personnel: Don Palladino, Buddy Childers, Joe Triscari, Chico Alvarez, George Werth (tp); J.J. Johnson, Kai Winding, Si Zentner, John Halliburton (tb); John Graas, Vincent de Rosa (fhr); Clarence Karella (tu); Ronny Lang, Ethmer Roten (fl,as); Ted Nash, Gene Cipriano (ts); Chuck Gentry (bar); Rocky Cole (p); Al Hendrickson (g); Joe Mondragon (b); Alvin Stoller (d); Larry Bunker (perc); Jack Costanzo (bgo) and Pete Rugolo (arr, cond).
Rugolo, of course, was head of Mercury's A&R back then, so there are incredible lineups on both sessions, with Rugolo corralling the best West Coast jazz readers and a bunch of crack movie-studio session guys, too. Page handles Rugolo's sophisticated brass writing with ease and gives as good as she gets from the band's restless Mack truck sections. Interestingly, Page knew she not only had to sing with swing here but also had to dominate the orchestra, riding on top and not winding up trampled underneath.
The careful listener will notice that each Rugolo arrangement is a challenging work of art, with all sorts of instruments coming and going and entering and exiting at odd places. Page, the seasoned pro, zig-zags through all of it without breaking into a sweat, leaving plenty of space for the orchestra to show off its stuff. She was as cool as they come.
Of note, photos from the session on the back of the album show Page in oversized black Lucille Ball-style glass frames so she could read the music. There are mini solos throughout the album, including superb blowing by Bud Shank on I've Got My Eyes on You and a few bars by J.J. Johnson on Taking a Chance on Love. Where Page double-clutches is at the end of songs, where the band rises up to breathe fire and she has to hold a note. She does so with incredible finesse. It's a shame Page didn't more band albums like this one. But back then, pop paid the bills. Patti Page died in 2013.
JazzWax tracks:Patti Page in the Land of Hi-Fi has been released many times over the years in the U.S. and Japan, but Fresh Sound offers the best value, since it combines Hi-Fi with Page's The West Side, with West Coast jazz combos co-arranged by Rugolo and Bill Holman, Shorty Rogers and Marty Paich. You'll find both albums together here. You also can listen to Hi-Fi for free at Spotify.
JazzWax clips:Here'sNevertheless. Listen to the band's power and complex instrumental road map on this one...
Harold McNair is barely known today. Yet he was one of the prettiest and most exciting modern flutists of the late 1960s and very early '70s. He was a beautiful saxophonist as well. McNair got off to a slow start, and when he finally was rolling, jazz was already fading. Born in Jamaica, McNair spent the first 10 years of his musical career playing Caribbean music in the Bahamas. A self-taught musician, McNair soon found himself on a dreaded Calypso track despite his passion for jazz.
In 1960, Quincy Jones hired McNair for his "Birth of a Band" orchestra when it toured Europe. It's unclear how Jones came to hear him. Fortunately, McNair was a member of the Jones orchestra when it was recorded live in Lausanne, Switzerland, in June 1960.
By 1961, McNair was living full-time in London, and he recorded albums with British jazz drummer Tony Crombie and percussionist-vocalist Jack Costanzo. In late 1961, McNair led a group at Ronnie Scott's club in London, but as work dried up, he returned to the Bahamas to record. Back in London in 1965, McNair gigged and recorded Affectionate Fink, a leadership album backed by Alan Branscombe (p) David Izenzon (b) and Charles Moffett (d), who played with Ornette Coleman at the time.
McNair's next recording came in 1967, when he was taped live with Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis in Manchester, England (Oh Gee! Live in Manchester 1967). He also is featured extensively on flute and saxophone on Donovan's In Concert album, recorded at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif., on September 23, 1967. The following year he recorded his second leadership album, Harold McNair, that included a moderate instrumental hit called The Hipster. In '68 he moved on to orchestral recordings led by British bandleader Vic Lewis.
McNair was at his peak in 1970, when he recorded mostly on flute backed by an enormous swinging orchestra with strings arranged by John Cameron. The resulting RCA studio album was called Flute & Nut, and the recording finally established him as a powerhouse player. Sadly, there are no liner notes detailing the story behind the album or the personnel. The album's tracks are Umbrella Man, The Night Has a Thousand Eyes (killer arrangement and flute solo), You Are Too Beautiful, Barnes Bridge, Nomadic Joe, Herb Green, My Romance (on which McNair plays alto sax) and Burnt Amber.
The music is hypnotic. The arrangements are smart and driving, and McNair sails above the action, swooping in and out with strong, sensual lines. A number of the flute tracks feature McNair's humming-playing technique. No matter how many times I listen to this album, I never tire of hearing it.
After Flute & Nut, McNair spent the balance of 1970 recording on Blossom Dearie's That's the Way I Want It to Be and John Cameron's Whole Lotta Love as well as recording an excellent leadership album called The Fence, with Steve Winwood on organ.
And that was it. Harold McNair died of lung cancer in March 1971. He was only 39.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Harold McNair's Flute & Nut teamed with Harold McNair here. The album is also available for free listening at Spotify.
JazzWax clip: Here's Burnt Amber from Flute & Nut...
Jazz fans view the saxophone narrowly. What I mean is that we tend to think of the reed instrument in a straight line from Frankie Trumbauer in the '20s and Benny Carter and Bud Freeman in the '30s to Chu Berry, Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Lester Young, Stan Getz, Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobley, John Coltrane and Wayne Shorter. But in the late 1940s and '50s, there were far more saxophonists recording R&B than jazz. The jazz feel and improvisation's demands were daunting for many saxophonists, who instead turned to R&B. Fortunately for them, the demand for R&B reed players soared with the dance revival of the late 1940s, the advent of the 45rpm single in 1952 and the explosive emergence of rock 'n' roll in the mid-'50s.
My statement above about jazz's prohibitive challenges takes nothing away from the mighty work of R&B reed giants such as Louis Jordan, Maxwell Davis, Sam "the Man" Taylor, King Curtis, Eddie Vinson, Red Prysock, Earl Bostic, Red Holloway, Lynn Hope, Joe Houston and so many others. Let's also not forget that many jazz artists recorded first on R&B singles, including Benny Golson and Coltrane. R&B was simply a potent genre with different requirements, including power, gruffness, grittiness, stamina and showmanship. If jazz was intellectual office work, R&B was manual labor.
Among R&B's many tough tenors whose names are largely forgotten today is Clifford Scott. Born in San Antonio, Texas, Scott began playing professionally in the mid-1940s. While still a teen, Scott joined Lionel Hampton's jump blues orchestra in 1948. By 1950, he was playing with Roy Milton and Jay McShann, rejoining Hampton in 1953 for a year. Then Scott was hired by Bill Doggett and remained with the organist's ensemble until 1961, when Scott relocated to Los Angeles.
With Doggett in 1956, Scott co-wrote the massive instrumental hit Honky Tonk, Parts 1 and 2 with co-writers Doggett, guitarist Billy Butler and drummer Shep Shepherd, and Scott played the standout sax lead.
In 1963, as R&B faded and new approaches by Stax and Motown gained crossover appeal, Scott shifted to soul jazz. On the album Out Front, (Pacific Jazz), his first leadership recording and what might be Bob Porter's earliest set of liner notes, Scott played alto and tenor. He was backed by Les McCann on piano, Joe Pass on guitar, Herbie Lewis on bass and Paul Humphrey on drums. Interestingly, Scott had a wonderfully slippery sound and double-time style that was perhaps most akin to Jimmy Forrest's or Gene Ammons's on tenor and Benny Carter's on alto.
Five of the album's songs are by McCann—Samba de Bamba, Over and Over, As Rosie and Ellen Dance, Cross Talk and Out Front. The others are Joe McCoy's Why Don't You Do Right and Scott's own Just Tomorrow. Scott, throughout, brings a crisp, eager sound that's beautifully framed by the quartet behind him, particularly McCann's piano.
After this album, Scott worked in the Los Angeles studios and joined Ray Charles's band from 1966 to 1973, at which point he returned to San Antonio in 1976 and was based there for the balance of his career. Unfortunately, he didn't make too many more jazz albums. Scott died in 1993 at age 64.
JazzWax tracks: Sadly, Clifford Scott's Out Front never made the jump to digital and today can only be found on vinyl. Hopefully, whoever owns the Pacific Jazz catalog will make it available.
JazzWax clip: Here's Scott playing his composition Just Tomorrow...
The 1970s were a no-man's land for acoustic jazz. The rise of album rock, arena concerts and electronic instruments led to the growing popularity of psychedelic jazz-rock fusion and funk, especially on college campuses. As a result, many jazz labels during this period followed the money, devoting much of their budgets to the new forms. The siphoning of dollars and producers to the electric side resulted in a glut of thinly supervised acoustic jazz recordings that lacked much vision and were often little more than rambling bop and hard-bop revival releases.
There were plenty of acoustic exceptions, of course. One of them was was drummer Pete Magadini's Bones Blues. Recorded in August 1977 in Toronto for the Sackville label, the album featured tenor saxophonist Don Menza, pianist Wray Downes, bassist Dave Young and Magadini on drums.
Much of the excitement comes from the interplay between Menza's fierce attack on uptempo numbers and Magadini's driving rhythms. On the ballads, the quartet grabs your ear with biting depth and passion.
The album's songs are Old Devil Moon, Freddie Freeloader, Poor Butterfly, Solar, I Remember Clifford, What A Time We Had, Bones Blues and an alternate take of Freddie Freeloader. Each track delivers a different side of Menza's articulation and Magadini's personality. Downes is a splendid Canadian pianist with formal training, and Young provides woody support throughout.
Born in Great Barrington, Mass., in 1942, Pete Magadini moved with his family to Palm Springs, Calif., when he was 6. In 1960, he studied drums at New York's Henry Adler Drum School and then attended the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, graduating in 1965. He soon formed a trio with keyboardist George Duke. In 1969, he moved to Los Angeles and played with Don Menza. Then he worked with pop artists Bobbie Gentry and Diana Ross before heading off to the University of Toronto, receiving his Master of Music degree in 1973. By the late 1970s, he was playing routinely with Menza, Downes and Young.
Magadini and Menza began recording together on Polyrhythm in 1975, and this quartet would record again in 1991at Claudio's in Montreal.
For more information on Pete Magadini, go here. For more information on Don Menza, go here. For more information on Wray Downes, go here and here. And for more information on Dave Young, go here.
Someone should get these guys back together again.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Bones Blues (Sackville/Delmark) here.
In The Wall Street Journal this week, I interviewed Rafael Viñoly, the architect who designed New York's 432 Park Ave., currently the tallest residential tower in the world, for my "House Call" column (go here). For those who aren't up on street addresses, it's the tall, slender building that you can see from almost anywhere in the city. Rafael grew up in Buenos Aires with a great love of the piano, and his only frustration today is that he isn't able to play jazz convincingly. So he recently bought a trombone to see if his improvisational skills will improve on that instrument. [Photo above of 432 Park Ave. by Marc Myers]
Also in the WSJ, I had a chance to interview one of my favorite disco-era singers—Candi Staton— on her favorite song for my "Playlist" column (go here). It's Ruth Brown's (Mama) He Treats Your Daughter Mean. But you'll never believe why.
JazzWax housekeeping. Apologies that some of JazzWax's links in my archives aren't working when you click on them. That's because I'm doing some under-the-hood housekeeping, and a vast number of pages are down until I've finished upgrading them. Little by little.
Oscar Dennard, Part 1. Following my post on pianist Oscar Dennard, Mark Miller sent along the following PDF from the Utica (N.Y.) Daily Press in 1959. Click to enlarge...
Oscar Dennard, Part 2. Flurin Casura sent along the following:
"As noted, the photo of Dennard with Idrees Sulieman and Jamil Nasser was taken at the club Africana in Zurich in 1959. Visit this site, click on the "looking back" icon in the right-hand column and then "Africana" to find two more (without Dennard) as well as other great photos."
Gene Harris and Roger Kellaway. Jim Eigo of Jazz Promo Services sent along this clip of the two piano greats playing three songs on two pianos...
Jackie Paris and Anne Marie Moss. For those of us who remember New York in the early 1970s, the city was a rather strange place. The 1950s hadn't quite ended yet, and the 1970s hadn't really begun. Charles Miles sent along a 1973 jazz listing in New York magazine for Jackie Paris and Anne Marie Moss singing together at the Horn and Hardart at 104 W. 57th St. (photo above, by Carl Burton) plus an ad from the Village Voice. For those too young to know much about Horn and Hardart, it was a popular waiter-less art-deco cafeteria chain in New York that placed dishes of prepared foods on shelves. Customers could see the selection of dinner and desert dishes through little glass windows. Feeding the correct amount of coins into slots allowed you to open little glass windows to remove the dishes you wanted. One imagines Joe Franklin eating Jell-O while holding court at a table. Sweet Smell of Success meets Broadway Danny Rose...
Sunshine pop. Following my post on sunshine pop, I heard from Jerry Hopkins of the Twinn Connexion. I asked him a few questions about the genre and his group with twin brother Jay...
"Hi, Marc. You ask how we wound up in the sunshine pop music business. I guess my twin brother, Jay, and I had a dream to be on The Ed Sullivan Show. Our motivation was to get out of Montana, where the likes of our kind had very little support, even though we did create a half-hour TV show on Helena's KXLJ called Teen Time Varieties, sponsored by Popsicle Pete. Record companies in those days would scout for groups that seemed to be everywhere. Then you'd cut a 45, throw it out in the marketplace and see if something happened.
"I remember an executive at a radio station in Ohio who pointed to an enormous cardboard box holding thousands of recent releases that they received weekly. Only a few ever received a listen. As you know, being a music historian, the 1960s had so much going on. Jay and I had a very honest approach. We didn't imitate anyone, even though our interest in music was all-encompassing, from the Everly Brothers to Patti Page. Eventually we wound up in New York.
"One afternoon we were rehearsing at the New Theatre, on East 54th. St. We caught the ear of producer Thomas Z. Shepard. Tom watched us for a bit and suggested he take us into Columbia studios to cut a single, which we did with songwriter Joe Reposo [later of Sesame Street fame].
"Bill Downer of Northern Publishing approached us after a performance of our act at the Champagne Gallery in Greenwich Village and enlisted us to record a song for Jerry Keller and Dave Blume—I Think I Know Him. Everyone was impressed enough to give us a shot. The music they wrote for us is now considered sunshine pop. Back then it was just pleasant, upbeat music for young people.
"I found out years later that Twinn Connexion had success in Mexico, where we reached #1 with the single Sixth Avenue Stroll for a few weeks and had raised enough interest with Decca to release another single and a full album in 1968. It's funny, I've since been contacted by fans in Mexico who grew up listening to us.
"So what happened to Twinn Connexion? Like most groups, we didn't have enough money to keep going. Jay and I had appeared on the Upbeat Show in Cleveland, and our Oh What a Lovely Day single was climbing the charts in Pittsburgh. We thought we might be on a roll, but then Westinghouse Electric won a bid for MCA, and the record executives who were involved in our records had new priorities. Instead of supporting our release, they decided to go for a second 45 and toss it out there. The result was Turn Down Day and I Think I Know Him. Even though we got some airplay in Olympia, Wash., and the Boston area, we lost momentum and were broke from our promotional tour of the Midwest. Decca didn't offer financial help, and whatever we had came from a TV ad Jay and I had done for Imperial Margarine. The ride was over, but it was fun."
Lee Morgan. Following my post on I Called Him Morgan, Ellie Becker sent along a favorite clip of Mark Murphy singing Morgan's Ceora...
Vera Lynn. Joe Lang sent along a link to an Independent article in the U.K. on Dame Vera. The British World War II chanteuse who sounded like mom and the girl next door has just turned 100.
Lucy, Viv and Joan. Director Raymond De Felitta (Tis Autumn: The Search for Jackie Paris and ABC's Madoff) just posted on a Lucy Show episode in which Lucy and Vivian Vance run into Joan Crawford. Great analysis! (go here). [Photo above from YouTube]
What the heck. Glen Hartley reminded me last week of the Small Faces' Itchycoo Park from 1967...
Oddball album cover of the week.
Who knew? A whole new genre. I suspect this record was marketed in Taiwan in the early 1960s. Here's a sense of how the music sounded...
Before I tell you what I'm writing about today, listen to this...
That's trombonist Al Grey soloing on Thad Jones's arrangement of Makin' Whoopee. The song appears on the album Sinatra at the Sands, featuring the Count Basie Orchestra live with Frank Sinatra at the Sands Hotel in 1966. Grey had the sole instrumental on the double album, and it gave Sinatra a vocal break.
Known for using a plunger mute to give his horn a soulful, conversational tone and for his white sun hat, Grey joined Basie in October 1957 and remained with the band until 1961, playing only occasionally with them. Bret Primack interviewed Grey on camera before the trombonist's death in 2000 and asked him about this album. Here'sBret and Grey in conversation at Grey's home on New York's Long Island in 1998...
Precious little is known about Oscar Dennard. A gifted pianist with octopus hands and superb time, Dennard made far too few recordings and wasn't alive long enough to be fully appreciated or interviewed for articles or album liner notes. Now, with the release of The 4 American Jazz Men in Tangier (Groovin' High/Sunnyside), we have a rich new find. The first CD in the two-CD set features a previously released album—The Legendary Oscar Dennard, which was recorded in July 1959. The second CD features Dennard performing earlier that year at a party at Quincy Jones's New York apartment. More on this new set in a moment.
Dennard was born in Memphis on June 13, 1928 and raised in St. Petersburg, Fla. In the 1940s, he was working at the Mitchell Hotel in Memphis. In Preston Lauterbach's book The Chitlin' Circuit and the Road to Rock 'n' Roll, we get a glimpse of the young Dennard: "At the Mitchell Hotel on Beale and Hernando in Memphis, the club seldom shut its doors. So [owner] Sunbeam Mitchell employed numerous house musicians to rotate throughout the days into nights. The head-cutting never stopped. Phineas Newborn Jr., then a teenage prodigy, dominated the piano. 'Phineas cut me,' fellow tinkler Ford Nelson admitted. 'The only one that ever got to him was a fellow named Oscar Dennard.' "
Dennard began his recording career in New York in January 1956. On the session for the obscure Henson label, he was backed by bassist Joe Benjamin and drummer Osie Johnson—two studio stalwarts. Strangely, the recording was never released. In most cases, the decision not to release recordings rested with the session producer or label. Perhaps they were dissatisfied with the results. Or perhaps Dennard was unhappy with the playback.
Weeks later, Dennard joined Lionel Hampton's orchestra and went on tour with the band to Europe. Dennard was on Hampton's recordings throughout 1956, including A L'Olympia, Vol. 1 & 2 and Hamp In Hi Fi (both recorded in Paris); the precious Jazz Flamenco (recorded in Madrid); and Lionel Hampton And His All Stars 1956 (recorded in New York). As jazz critic and author Dan Morgenstern wrote in editor Sheldon Meyer''s Living With Jazz, Hampton "had a wonderful unsung pianist in the late Oscar Dennard who never was sufficiently featured." Dennard continued to tour and record with Hampton throughout 1957 and '58.
In October 1958, Dennard appeared on A.K. Salim's brilliant Blues Suite album on Savoy, and sometime in '59 he played on Jesse Powell's album Blow Man Blow. It's around this time, in March or April of 1959, that Dennard was at a party at Quincy Jones's apartment in New York as a member of the Idrees Sulieman Quartet. His piano performance that evening was captured on tape by bassist Jamil Nasser just before the quartet headed off to tour in Europe and the Middle East.
In July 1959, Dennard was on tour with trumpeter Idrees Sulieman's quartet, featuring Dennard on piano, Nasser on bass and Buster Smith on drums. One of their stops was Tangier, Morocco, where they remained for several months installed at the city's Casino. They recorded a studio album in Tangier, which was eventually released on Japan's Somethin' Else label and is part of this new set. The music is breathtakingly elegant. Sulieman remains unheralded as a masterful arranger and trumpeter with a strong, open tone akin to Donald Byrd's and Kenny Dorham's. [Photo above, from left, of Oscar Dennard, Idrees Sulieman and Jamil Nasser, at Club Africana in Zurich in 1959 by Hr. Hugentobler]
In his liner notes for the original Japanese release and the new two-CD set, reissue producer Jacques Muyal writes that the quartet on tour had played in Marseilles (France), St. Gallen (Switzerland), Tangeir and then Cairo (Egypt), where Dennard was stricken with typhoid fever. He died in 1960 and was buried in Cairo at Zan Eldin cemetery. Dennard was only in his early 30s.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find The 4 American Jazz Men in Tangier (Groovin' High/Sunnyside) here. The sound on the studio CD is sterling while the live sound on the second disc is a bit coarse. But for me, the less-than-perfect fidelity can be overlooked given the rare and profound insights into Dennard's playing. Someone should track down the tapes for that first Dennard studio date.
JazzWax clips:Here's Oscar Dennard with Idrees Sulieman (tp), Jamil Nasser (b) and Buster Smith (d) from The Legendary Oscar Dennard (the first disc on The 4 American Jazz Men in Tangier set) playing All of You...
And here's Dennard playing Invitation from the second disc, recorded at Quincy Jones's apartment in March or April 1959, just before Dennard's fateful trip abroad...
Jazz is the only form of American music with a history that feels like a film noir. As a proudly nocturnal sub-culture, jazz has its own language, its own style and its own cynical way of looking at the world. Along the way, the 100-year-old jazz story has amassed dozens of secrets and unsolved mysteries. What happened the night Chu Berry died in a car crash in Ohio? What exactly happened to Lester Young while he was incarcerated for drug possession in an Army prison in 1945? Was he beaten or raped? How exactly did Bill Evans become hooked on heroin in the late 1950s and who bears that responsibility? Why was Bud Powell beaten by the police in Philadelphia at age 20? How exactly did Gerry Mulligan travel from New York to Los Angeles with girlfriend Gail Maden in 1951 and where did he stop along the way? How did Scott LaFaro wind up in a fatal auto accident in July 1961 while visiting his mother in Geneva, N.Y.? These are just a handful.
With the premier this Friday of I Called Him Morgan, a documentary directed by Kasper Collin, one of jazz's shadowy mysteries has been solved. During a blizzard in February 1972, trumpeter Lee Morgan was gunned down by his common-law wife at Slugs, a long-gone jazz club in New York's East Village. For the past 45 years, it was unclear why Helen More had shot Morgan in between sets. Most people assumed it was the work of a woman with longstanding mental problems. The answer is more complex, and I'm not going to spoil it for you here. Let's just say that neither Morgan nor More were wrapped too tight but that she wasn't as wiggy as jazz fans might imagine. [Photo of Lee Morgan and Helen More above, courtesy of the Film Society of Lincoln Center]
I saw the film a couple of weeks ago, and while I would have liked the documentary to tell the Lee Morgan story with a bit more poetry, the film's climax is powerful stuff. It turns out that before her death in 1996, More gave an on-tape interview about the events leading up to the shooting. In this regard, the film is invaluable and sheds enormous light on the tragic story as well as on Morgan's personality quirks and drug problems.
Where does Lee Morgan fit into the evolution of the jazz trumpet? In the hard bop realm, I'd put him on the same level as Clifford Brown and Freddie Hubbard, with Brown at the start of the movement in the early 1950s and Hubbard peaking at the tail end in 1969 and the start of jazz-rock fusion. Of course, there were plenty of other trumpet greats during this expansive period, including Miles Davis, Blue Mitchell and Donald Byrd. But in the hard-bop universe, Morgan was an exceptionally soulful player who could blow blistering hot on uptempo tunes and mournfully on ballads. As a hard-bop leader and composer, he's probably rivaled only by Horace Silver, Benny Golson and Elmo Hope for his sheer number of exceptional compositions. Virtually all of Morgan's Blue Note albums, including The Cooker, Leeway, The Rajah and The Sixth Sense, remain brilliant classics.
I Called Him Morgan will be screened at New York's Francesca Beale Theater at Lincoln Center (144 W. 65th St., south side) on March 24 and 25. For times and tickets, go here. For more on the film's national screenings, go here.
JazzWax clips:Here's a compilation of Lee Morgan solos assembled by Bret Primack during Morgan's 1961 tour in Japan with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers...
And here's Morgan with Benny Golson (ts), Bobby Timmons (p), Jymie Merritt (b) and Art Blakey (d) playing Benny's I Remember Clifford in Belgium in 1958. It's one of the finest recorded performances of the eulogistic ballad...
Chuck Berry, a singing electric blues guitarist with a remarkably limber stage presence who pioneered rock 'n' roll and single-handedly put the saxophone out of business as a lead R&B instrument in 1955, died on March 18. He was 90.
Berry's biography and his dynamic role in helping to hatch rock 'n' roll have been brightly traced in recent days in newspaper obituaries, so I'm not going to rehash all of it here. Largely missing from many life-ending portraits, however, is why Berry came to the fore in 1955 and the grief he went through during his career trying to re-claim credit for songs that other artists routinely adapted or falsely claimed credit for. As a result, Berry developed a healthy distrust of rockers and their slippery surrogates.
From the start of his solo career in the mid-1950s, Berry's gift was an ability to sing the blues about teenage joys and anxieties while playing a twangy electric guitar supported by a powerful back beat and tinkling piano. Berry's taut attack was delivered with cool tension and lanky humor.
Prior to Berry's emergence in 1955, many R&B leaders were saxophonists. The dominant reed instrument assumed the sensual growl many R&B songs needed for expressive, earthy color. Leaders included Earl Bostic, Louis Jordan, Bull Moose Jackson, Wild Bill Moore and Illinois Jacquet. After Berry's success, rock leaders were largely electric guitarists, and the saxophone was relegated to solos on breaks and used for background texture.
But by mid-decade, the saxophone was running out of steam. For one, a leader couldn't sing and play the sax at the same time the way one could with an electric guitar. Second, a growing number of teens found the saxophone outdated—a product of the swing era. Third, few inspired teens could pick up and play the horn without years of experience, since the reed instrument was unwieldy and tricky to play with compliance. Fourth, a sax was expensive and required lessons and hours of practice in a place that wouldn't disturb households, which eluded many teens. But perhaps the saxophone's biggest handicap in 1955 was that its volume couldn't be cranked up.
By contrast, the electric guitar and a portable amp-speaker combo were relatively cheap and could be used in one's bedroom at any volume while accompanying records. It also looked cool and evoked modernist power.
Berry's genius was his ability to appeal to black and white teen audiences by hitching the blues to rockabilly. What's more, his singing voice featured a gleeful, laid-back spirit while his fingers could bend two strings on his guitar, emulating a rural wail.
Berry's songs about high school, car chases and romance resonated with young audiences, particularly in the South and West. Meanwhile, his stagecraft (which often featured a hopping split and his famous duck walk) wowed audiences much the way Big Jay McNeely and other flamboyant R&B saxophonist fired up audiences by leaning way back or writhing around on stage while playing.
Though Berry wasn't the first R&B guitarist to make waves in the 1950s—Tiny Grimes, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Ike Turner, Bo Diddley and others were recording on the electric guitar then—he understood the thump and bump of rock 'n' roll and the kind of risque songs and sassy, yowling croon that black and white rock 'n' roll audiences liked.
Like acne, hot rods and hair pomade, Berry knew the common denominators of adolescent life and what made teens tick. As his songs resonated with the expanding market in the late 1950s, other artists and record producers tried to profit off of Berry's electric guitar sound and rocking blend of Chicago electric blues and western swing.
Though Berry's own Maybellene was influenced by Bob Willis's Ida Red, Berry's recording was at first credited to Berry, disc jockey Alan Freed and Russ Fratto. Freed wound up with credit because it was a common way for labels to launder payola to disc jockeys to get them to plug songs. In this case, it may have been added to ensure Berry would wind up in several of Freed's all-important jukebox films of the 1950s. Fratto had reportedly loaned money to Chess, so his song credit was probably a form of payoff. By 1986, Freed's estate had given up credit, as did Fratto's.
Perhaps two of the most popular lifts of Berry's music were by the Beach Boys and the Beatles. In 1963, the Beach Boys' Surfin' U.S.A. was a brazen adaptation of Berry's Sweet Little Sixteen. Under pressure from Berry's publisher in the 1960s, the song's credit was transferred to Berry. As for the Beatles, Come Together owed much to Berry's You Can't Catch Me. The issue of credit on that song was settled out of court.
I tried several times to interview Berry, but by 2011, he simply wasn't granting many and his gatekeeper was less interested in preserving history and more concerned about holding on to his account. A shame now, in retrospect. Nevertheless, every rock guitarist owes Berry a debt, even if it isn't clear how Berry felt in his later years about his role in rock history or about how others helped themselves to his music. Tell "Shaycuffski" the news, indeed!
JazzWax clips: Here are a few videos of Chuck Berry in action:
Here's Berry in one of Alan Freed's jukebox movies, Rock, Rock, Rock (1956), singing You Can't Catch Me...
Here's Berry in another of Freed's jukebox films, Mister Rock and Roll (1957), singing Oh Baby Doll...
Here's Berry in 1960 performing on French television, putting on a virtual masterclass in rock stagecraft, including his hopping split and duck walk along with several other signature moves that liberated the electric guitar...
Here's Berry playing Sweet Little Sixteen on the T.A.M.I. Show in 1964...
And here's one of my favorites, the lesser-known Come On (1961) with Martha Berry, Berry's mother...
JazzWax tracks:There are plenty of Chuck Berry collections. The one I own is Rock & Roll Music, Any Old Way You Choose It: The Complete Chuck Berry Studio Recordings Plus...!, a 16-CD set released by Bear Family in 2014 (go here).
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.
