After my post last week on trumpeter Tony Fruscella, reader Don Frese wrote and asked if I knew about bassist Red Mitchell's vocalese rendition of Fruscella's recording of I'll Be Seeing You. That song originally appeared on Fruscella's Tony Fruscella album for Atlantic in April 1955. I wasn't aware of Mitchell's vocal, so I tracked it down and gave a listen. It blew my mind. Before I share with you how Mitchell came to record it and why it's so little known, let's listen to the two tracks:
Here's Tony Fruscella's trumpet interpretation of I'll Be Seeing You using the song's chord changes to create an entirely different melody. He was backed by Bill Triglia (p), Bill Anthony (b) and Junior Bradley (d). Jazz at its best...
And here's Red Mitchell's singing his lyrics on top of Fruscella's recording. It mysteriously was listed as "Bonus Track" on the CD version of Mitchell's Simple Isn't Easy, recorded in 1983 for the Sunnyside label...
Naturally, I had a bunch of questions about how this glorious recording came to be. So I reached out to François Zalacain (above), the founder of Sunnyside Records who produced the Mitchell album and recorded him singing along with the Fruscella instrumental. François is a jazz hero who for decades has made sure great music has been documented. He relocated to New York in 1980 as an IBM engineer. An ardent jazz fan who vacationed in the city just to visit the clubs, François decided to stay here and founded Sunnyside in 1982. The label's logo of a girl skipping rope was found on a rubber stamp in a Greenwich Village shop by a friend and represented the spirit of the music he recorded.
Here's what François told me about the Red Mitchell vocalese recording:
"In 1977 or '78, I was attending the Nice Jazz Festival in France. One night, I was with a friend, an American painter, and my wife, Christine, in the Roman amphitheater in the vast Jardins de Cimiez main concert area. At 11 p.m., bassist Red Mitchell was scheduled to play a set. [Photo above of Jardins de Cemiez in Nice, France, by Philippe Bertini]
"When Red came out, he was alone, without sidemen. After he played a set of songs on the piano, he went to the microphone, took out a cassette player from his pocket and put it close to his mouth. He pressed the play button, and as Tony Fruscella's trumpet began to play I'll Be Seeing You, Red sang along with words he had written to Tony's solo. The audience was blown away. So were we.
"A couple of years later in New York in 1983, I was at Bradley's, a club that used to be on University Place in Greenwich Village. Red was living in Sweden at the time and would come to New York each year for five weeks to play with different pianists. By then, I knew him well. [Photo above of Red Mitchell]
"When I had a chance to talk to him that night, I told him how wonderful his set was in Nice a few years earlier. I said I wanted to record an album of him singing original songs and to include his vocal of Tony's solo. Red said his tape of Tony playing wasn't so good. These were the days before downloads and getting friends to burn you something. So I had to go out and find a copy of the Fruscella vinyl album so he had something to sing along to. [Photo above of Red Mitchell at the piano]
"In my neighborhood at the time, at 42nd Street and 9th Avenue, I knew a guy who sold used records on the street. I found the Fruscella album there for $1, but when I brought it home and put it on, the vinyl's quality wasn't very good. So I called a friend in Paris who imported vinyl albums from Japan. I asked him if there was a Japanese pressing of the album. My friend said there was, and I ordered it from him. When the vinyl arrived, Red came into the studio and we recorded the instrumental track with Red overdubbing his vocal with the lyrics I had heard in Nice.
"Once I had the track, I wasn't certain I could put it out. I was still young in the record business. I called a friend in Los Angeles at Chappell Music, the music publishing company. I asked if I could release the track. My friend said, 'Send it to me.' So I made a copy and mailed it off. A week later, he called me back. He said, 'No way you can put that out. Those lyrics haven't been authorized by the Fruscella estate.'
"Red wasn’t thinking of making money off of the track and neither was I. There weren't going to be any royalties anyway, since they weren't published. In addition, many people record stuff like this all the time—adding words and vocals based on other musicians' improvised lines to songs. So I decided to include the track on Red's Simple Isn't Easy when I released it in 1989. I'd simply add the song at the end, calling it Bonus Track. It pops up suddenly at the end.
"Red told me that he and Tony were friends from their early days in New Jersey. Red was born in New York but lived in New Jersey and so did Tony. Red said Tony lived out there because he loved going into the woods to be with nature. One day he found a garden snake and kept it as a pet. That's how sensitive Tony was. When Tony died in 1969, Red said he wrote the lyric to keep for himself, as a personal tribute to his friend.
"A year after I released the album with the hidden track, I was at my office when an assistant to director Stanley Kubrick called from London. He said the he and Stanley had been driving recently through France at night when the Red's vocal on top of Tony's instrumental came on the radio. They couldn't get it in England, and Stanley wanted it very much. So I sent him the CD. Tony's playing and Red's words and voice on the track touches everyone who hears it, including you." [Photo of Stanley Kubrick courtesy of IMDB]
Red Mitchell died in 1992.
JazzWax tracks: Red Mitchell's Simple Isn't Easy CD with the hidden track included is out of print. The hidden recording is called Bonus Track, and you'll find the original CD here. You'll find a download of the album without the Bonus Track here.
