This magazine's purpose is to focus intelligent discussion on directions in music since 1968. When Miles Davis was asked the name of the 38-minute tune he and his band had just performed for the 600,000 people gathered at the Isle of Wight, he said "call it anything." Literal-minded discographers have persistently entitled the tune "Call It Anything" ever since... So a secondary purpose for this blog is to give me a place to write about anything I have on my mind, and call it anything.
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Earlier this month the newly re-constituted jazz/rock supergroup Return To Forever kicked off its RTF IV Hymn Of The 7th Galaxy world tour with two weeks in the land Down Under.Jean-Luc Ponty’s superb violin has been added and Al DiMeola’s guitar has been replaced by Frank Gambale’s.
All five musicians in RTF IV possess famously world-class chops, but getting players who have the technical prowess to do the job has seemingly never been an issue for Chick Corea and his various outfits called Return To Forever, now or ever: his own technique, sharp ears and advanced skills as both a composer and leader have given him a reputation as a rainmaker and kept him in the company of the world’s best jazz musicians since the beginning.Even in those early days, in November of 1971 when they were a nameless band booked for a gig at the Village Vanguard on the basis of Chick’s name, the personnel included Stanley Clarke on bass (who has been the bassist in every edition of RTF), Horacee Arnold on drums, Hubert Laws on flute and Flora Purim doing the vocals.
But that’s all history.It’s also really beside the point.
In this band, technique is a given.Chops are a requirement and just a stamp on the passport into the group.Every member of RTF IV can stun you with a 16th or 32nd or 64th note run or play a jaw-dropping solo, but the real question is, what does this new configuration of musical talents mean in practical terms?
In a recent phone conversation with drummer Lenny White, he told me it means a high level of musicality.Which sounds simple, but in fact, is the result of a complex weaving of the sum total of melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, dynamics and other elements into a pleasing whole, some of which has been rehearsed and some which is improvised on the spot.Collaboration is the thing.It is measured by the aesthetic results.Musically, the real creativity and fun begins when the all the component parts come together and complement each other.It’s fine for a musician to have a big ego, as long his level of admiration and respect for his musical collaborators is just as big.It’s not as easy as it looks.How many artistic relationships formed in the 70s and 80s have lasted into the new millennium?How many are still friends, and are writing new material?Exactly.
RTF IV is the real thing, organically grown, not another all-star grouping which looks good on paper but which, like an All Star team full of big name players, has the marquee value needed to sell tickets but no real life in it.So another word White used to describe this astonishing lineup—Chick Corea, p.; Stanley Clarke, b.; Lenny White, d.; Frank Gambale, g.; and Jean-Luc Ponty, v.—was “maturity.” As in, possessing the qualities of cooperation, wisdom and judgment one could expect from people who have been at this game for awhile, plus the musical breadth of knowledge, the understanding of the idiom and its history, that can be used to exchange meaningful musical ideas every night.As an example, he said that one of the surprises about the addition of versatile Frank Gambale was what RTF could do now with the blues.Long an admirer of the talents of former RTF band mate/guitarists Bill Connors and Al DiMeola, White has the ears of a producer (he used them to co-produce Stanley Clarke’s recent Grammy winner Stanley Clarke Band on Heads Up Records) and appreciates what Gambale’s musicianship has brought to the band.His enthusiasm for the unique possibilities that come with the guitarist’s addition was obvious.Despite what he characterized as “not much” available rehearsal time before they started their tour, he said the results were “magical.”
The only other dates announced so far by booking agent Ted Kurland are two in France next July:
07/07/2011 Return to Forever IV Hymn Of The 7th Galaxy Tour Vienne Jazz Festival 7 Rue du Cirque Vienne France
07/14/2011 Return to Forever IV Hymn Of The 7th Galaxy Tour Theatre de la Mer Route de la Corniche Sete France
Before this year’s Grammy awards are incorrectly written off as a series of acrimonious disappointments and bizarre twists, it's important to quickly note several very good things that happened.
Not that it’s easy to overlook the Grammy for Record of the Year going to a country band’s tune that could well become subject to a plagiarism suit over the changes borrowed almost note-for-note from the Alan Parsons Project 1982 “Eye in the Sky,” (George Harrison was successfully sued for less) or the bewildering award of Album of the Year to a collection of aging-teen angst clichés that so successfully extinguished the buzz of the evening’s festivities that when the recipients enjoined the assembled revelers to go home as they played a final encore, their request was entirely unnecessary--tear gas would not have cleared the room any faster.
No question, the sight of a candy-assed media fabrication like Justin Bieber sashaying his way through an engineered Toontown of a recording career, accompanied by pubescent girls and adoring accountants wetting themselves, is not easy to endure (the mere fact that he didn’t win a Grammy almost made the cut for my Ten Best Moments.)
Nor is being subjected to Eminem’s glowering self-pity as he did his rendition of a musical John Dillinger ambush, attracted to the glow of Staples Center by the prospect of seeing his own latter-day Myrna Loy… only to be disappointed to find Lady Gaga there instead, her pale-but-faithfully energetic impression of Madonna being sucked skyward by the tornado of popular taste.
But those were just annoying interruptions. Although your cynicism could make you want to pour yourself a strong drink, the only real cure for resenting another’s success is to succeed yourself. Instead of feeling defeated by a force of nature, Jeff Lynne declared in 1971 that his Electric Light Orchestra would pick up where the Beatles had left off. How big an ego does that require? One big enough to keep you at it until you succeed. John Lennon later admiringly called ELO the Sons of the Beatles… though they never won a Grammy, that's almost as good. (There will be no further discussion here of Grammy nominees who should have won.)
Here is my Top Ten List of the egos that were big enough. Thankfully.
10.Jeff Beck, the impossible-to-categorize car mechanic who is welcome in any venue as one of the most expressively versatile electric guitarists in the world, was nominated for 6 Grammys and won three of the most improbable: one for his work on Herbie Hancock’s Imagine project (Best Pop Collaboration with Vocals), one for Best Pop Instrumental Performance for his inspired turn playing the aria from the final act of Puccini’s Turandot, and Best Rock Instrumental Performance for his keyboard player Jason Rebello’s “Hammerhead,” a nifty little jazz/rock homage to Jan Hammer. In accepting his awards at the sparsely attended pre-broadcast Other Grammys, he looked genuinely humbled as he said: “It just proves if you keep going, you might get there.” Couldn’t have happened to a better guy.
9. Beck’s old buddy and fellow jazz/rock pioneer from the 70s and 80s, Stanley Clarke, invited Japanese pianist Hiromi, saxophonist Bob Sheppard and legendary Manhattan Transfer vocalist Cheryl Bentyne, among others, to join him in recording with his working band and producer Lenny White last March at a Burbank studio. That the resulting CD, Stanley Clarke Band, won the Grammy for Best Contemporary Jazz Album, means there’s hope for jazz and jazz/rock. Who knows, maybe even for rock. Nobody today believes that jazz was ever meant for more than 100 people in a dark, crowded club, or that, as the 70s spilled into the 80s, bands like Return to Forever and Weather Report were playing to thousands of people at a time.
8. Something happened as the 80s got underway. Ask some jazz musicians or fans knowledgeable about that period in jazz and you’re likely to get a face, an unpleasant one. When musical instrument designer (and guitarist/songwriter) Roger Linn accepted his technical Grammy, he said “Sometimes I have a hard time explaining to people what I do for a living. I’ve found that the following usually works pretty well. I’ll say, do you remember back in the early 1980s when pop music started using drum machines and consequently lost all of its soul and humanness? Well, I’d say, it’s my fault.” Truthfully, I always think of that time period as being a pop music golden age filled with the innovative outpourings of people like Prince and Thomas Dolby and Peter Gabriel and Michael Jackson. It’s the jazzers who lost their souls in the 80s, when they became desperate to get in on the action and sold out to the New Age money devil. Not that Jeff Lorber and the Rippingtons and Chick and Herbie didn’t make any good music, but the tidal wave of crappy fusion that was spawned almost killed the franchise. In fact, even now the prognosis for jazz’s body politic is shaky, as we scan the horizon for a doctor who’ll discover a cure for the epidemic of quiet recital music and empty clubs. You know you’re still in trouble when the brand name familiarity of standard covers and tribute albums can still beat out original material for a Grammy. Not that there's anything wrong with that (as Seinfeld used to say). You gotta make a buck. I'm just sayin'.
7. When John Mayer, Norah Jones and Keith Urban sang Dolly Parton’s “Joleen” they demonstrated why country music has become such a dominant force in music. The wheel has come all the way around. After Hank Williams and Patsy Cline opened the gates for the group of singers and songwriters that included Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, they brought with them their passionate love of the black singers like Ray Charles, Little Richard and Fats Domino. At that musical nexus there were no categories where all these popular musical forms could fit, so before there was folk, or rhythm and blues, or country or rock and roll, there was music. Norah Jones and her two guitar-strumming beaus reminded us.
6. I’d never heard of Mumford & Sons before last Sunday night’s Grammy broadcast, but suffice it to say, as they played I didn’t hear folk or country or blues or bluegrass, I just heard music. There is no category that adequately describes their rambunctious, over-the-ramparts enthusiasm for telling a musical story. Sun Records founder Sam Phillips would have listened to these brilliant young musicians and their elemental, high amperage passion and signed them immediately. John Hammond, as he did with Billie Holiday and Bob Dylan, would have signed them with Columbia and personally driven them all to Studio B in his own car.
5. Roy Haynes will celebrate his 86th birthday next month. You’ll often hear a musician casually say about a fellow player, “He/she’s played with everybody.” But if you ever hear Roy Haynes say it about himself, it will actually be true. When he received his Special Merit Award Grammy, he had contributed to and played with Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Dizzy Gillespie, Eric Dolphy, Bud Powell, Stan Getz, Sara Vaughn, Jackie McLean, Gerry Mulligan, Art Pepper and Sonny Rollins, as well as younger players like Chick Corea, Gary Burton, and Pat Metheny, and younger players still, like Christian McBride, Wallace Roney and Kenny Garrett. You might say that if the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences couldn’t manage to recognize people like Roy Haynes with Grammys, the awards would have no meaning at all.
4. Cee Lo Green won a Grammy for Best Urban/Alternative Performance for the brilliantly produced “Fuck You.” I have no idea what the other performances were, but frankly, with a bomb like this song it didn’t matter and never will. Arranged with classic mid-70s Motown instrumentation, Cee Lo charmingly was engineered to sound like he’s channeling Marvin Gaye, Al Green and Eddie LeVert as he sings the oldest song in the world. Maybe the funniest, most honest version yet. For his performance at Grammys LIII, Cee Lo dressed up in his most outlandish George Clinton threads, and backed himself with the Muppets plus Gwyneth Paltrow, defusing the dirty bomb CBS felt they had to censor (I’m uncertain if they did, I didn’t read Cee Lo’s lips.) I can’t imagine anyone listening to the song and not smiling. If there is such a person, this video (my nomination for video of the year, amateur or professional, no runner-up) would be the cure:
3. The opening number was an Aretha tribute that burned. It burned so hot that it eclipsed the memory of the 2006 Grammys opener when Sting, Dave Matthews, Vince Gill and drummer Pharrell Williams ripped it up on the Lennon-McCartney tune “I Saw Her Standing There.” Not only did Christina Aguilera vindicate herself after her mnemonically-challenged Super Bowl XLV rendition of the U.S. national anthem, she lovingly shredded “Ain’t No Way” and along with her sisters Florence Welch, Jennifer Hudson, Martina McBride and Yolanda Adams provided monster back-up vocals for each other and totally killed on “Till You Come Back To Me,” “Natural Woman,” “Respect,” and “Think,” among others. If you missed it:
2. Esperanza Spalding’s Grammy could well have been my #1 choice. Her Grammy and my joy at her receiving the award are self-explanatory in many ways. Stunningly beautiful and hugely talented, she is the first jazz artist to ever receive the Best New Artist award. Imagine the YouTube searches on her name the next day! The friendly new Google search engine was completing the word "j-a-z-z" before the searcher reached the second "z"! And how did a jazz artist beat out a tsunami of public sentiment in favor of Justin Bieber? The only explanation is that members of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences were listening to the music.
1. How good was Mick Jagger’s first appearance onstage at the Grammys? So good that I have to pick it over Esperanza's Grammy win because in the end, it's not about the accolades, it's not about who's deserving and who's not, the money, the vaporized CD sales or the apocalyptic economy. It's not about the big picture, it's about the little one. Through the magic of music Mick Jagger stripped away every worry and concern and thrust us headlong into a magnificent arrangement full of horns and a humping backbeat, and for that instant in time he captured the moment so completely that it's all there was. One NARAS attendee, an acclaimed singer/songwriter who was seated close enough to the stage to see the sweat on his face, told me of hoarseness the next day from prolonged screams of approval during Jagger’s performance--so severe that singing would have been impossible. The leader of “the greatest rock and roll band in the world,” who had begun his career in Alex Korner’s jazz-influenced Blues Incorporated nearly fifty years earlier, pranced, strutted, and sang “Everybody Needs Somebody to Love” in tribute to Solomon Burke, with the fervor and commitment of a born-again rocker preaching to the choir. Like all great performances, the electricity and immediacy came from the artist’s embrace of the crowd in front of him, instead of some imagined international audience that would hear and see it broadcast later. Within seconds he had the audience of his peers in the palm of his hand and revved up to a shouting hysteria. From the moment the spotlight hit him as he stood center stage--back to the audience, turning slowly while his cape was lifted from his shoulders a la James Brown--he took command of the room with the authority of a matador and gave one of the great performances of his lifetime.
West Coast jazz has traditionally been cool to the East Coast's hot. Dave Brubeck is always pictured in white linen slacks playing an open air concert-by-the-sea, while Charlie Parker is shown popping a Saturday night sweat in his sharkskin suit, squeezed onto a crowded nightclub stage.
The iconography extends to the West Coast audience. Like a glass of chablis, chilled, slow and laid back compared to an East Coaster's whiskey shot, feverish, fast and hard. The stereotypes are simplistic and a bit unkind, but contain a kernel of truth.
Which made the way in which the West Coast tradition was stood on its head all the more fun last Friday, Saturday and Sunday (August 20-22) when Lenny White took the stage with his Anomaly Band at Hollywood's Catalina Bar & Grill.
Catalina's lazy Blue Note-style dinner club atmosphere that has set the tone for the L.A. scene along with Vitello's, the Baked Potato, Jazz Bakery and Herb Alpert's new Vibrato Grill, filling the void created by the disappearance of 50's West Coast club institutions like Shelly's Manne Hole and the Lighthouse, was about to get loud.
Minutes before the first set guitarist Jimmy Herring, the jazz/rock-blues shredder of jam band Widespread Panic fame who regularly plays at 110+ dB in large arenas, voiced his concern for the cocktail-sipping diners seated at the tables in front of the stage. He said he had been fussing with positioning his monitor before the show, trying to find a way to angle or baffle it to save their ears. Then he smiled. The boss had just said it was time to go on.
White smartly started the set with the same high- energy track he uses to open his new Anomaly CD (Abstract Logix, 2010), "Drum Boogie," a funky, full tilt New Orleans- flavored bouncer that started simply with bassist Richie Goods playing a smoothly articulated but hard- plucked line that jolted the song to life like a pair of defibrillator paddles and gave it a hard push that kept it going to the end. When Vince Evans came in, leaning hard on the organ keys and goosing the amperage, the band jumped enthusiastically and exploded into this great set-opener like a vigorous heartbeat.
Before anyone in the band could cool off, the rhythm section of White, Goods and Evans lowered the gear into a range where I've never heard a "jazz" band go. "We Know" is hard, hard, fat-bottomed rock and roll bravura like what Cream and the James Gang did in the 1970's, a song of such auditory impact that Herring's earlier concerns made immediate sense. In truth, the monitors were not revved that high, but the sheer neural impact on the small room of a couple hundred people was of a similar magnitude as stacks of Marshall amps in a baseball stadium. The sound filled every molecule of matter in every corner of the building. And when the guitar solos started flying from Tom Guarna and Jimmy Herring. the deal was sealed. No one would ever confuse what these guys were doing with any jazz they'd ever heard before. This wasn't just jazz/rock, it was jazz/ROCK. This was new.
When the music ended, the stunned audience of Angelenos sat and quivered for a minute. As they did, White grabbed a microphone and stepped out from his kit into the lights and deadpanned, "Welcome to a quiet night of jazz at Catalina's."
After a beautifully serene "Dark Moon," written by guitarist David Gilmore, the band tore into White's magnificently deconstructed and re- arranged composition "Door #3" from his Present Tense (Hip Bop, 1995) which, among other things, showcased the individual talents of the players by letting each take a solo. White's arrangements don't always do this. Gratuitous soloing has overtaken much of mainstream jazz, live or recorded, for reasons of fashion and crowd-titillating commerce as much as anything else, but not White's (asked why, White simply said, "It's boring.") So until Evans opened "Door #3" with a growling, sweetly bluesy Jimmy Smith- like organ solo, his sturdily sensitive comping had not drawn any attention to itself... in many ways, the test of true artistry. But then, did he ever pull the ripcord on his parachute. With a sizzling foundation rumbling under the floor, the guitarists stepped in and began the kind of weaving of rhythm and lead guitar that is only possible with accomplished players (Dicky Betts and Duane Allman come to mind) playing so seamlessly that it sounded like one eight-handed guitarist playing two guitars.
The tune which is probably the heart and soul of this band arrived the next night. Ushered in by an opening keyboard cascade, "Election Day," no matter where it is placed in the set, is a warning of the storm that is always brewing on stage. Named simply for the day it was written, November 4, 2008, it is in many ways the signature anomaly of White's recently released CD. It is arranged by White in a way that opens it to what only these seasoned jazzers could have made it do. They made it swing. Ferociously. Not only did it thunder, it danced and shook. Each time Goods and the guitars pushed the bridge (reminiscent of the little cadenza at the end Led Zeppelin's "Heartbreaker") White would push it a little harder from the drum kit, shifting the rhythmic emphasis just slightly until this all-out rocker was sliding and slamming like an anvil on the back of a flat bed truck.. This is energy and muscle not heard since the earliest days of rock and roll, when for brilliant moments the music rocked and rolled. Properly warmed up, the band launched into a deftly-composed Tom Guarna piece called "If U Dare," a deceptively simple- sounding piece of jazz/rock that utilizes a combination of Lenny White's vigorous drum corps/ rock and roll drumming to set the pace and ethereal jazz chording. His fluid soloing opened up enough room for Jimmy Herring to join in the fun, and was a perfect companion piece to the classic Joe Henderson piece "Gazelle," which White had first performed and recorded with Henderson 40 years earlier at the legendary Lighthouse, along with Woody Shaw, George Cables and Ron McClure. In the sure hands of a jazz/rock composer/arranger (and aficionado) like White, "Gazelle" was transformed by his band into the purest kind of jazz/rock, a description which undoubtedly rankles purists but which speaks a higher language for anyone who has been listening to jazz since Miles worked over James Brown's "Cold Sweat" beat (whose composer, Pee Wee Ellis, ironically, was working over Miles' "So What") on 1968's Fillesde Kilimanjaro and has heard subsequent works like Emergency!, Bitches Brew, Sweetnighter, Red Clay, Hymn of the Seventh Galaxy, Birds of Fire or Head Hunters. Pure Jazz/Rock is such a delicately conceived blend that, like a perfect martini, it fills your head as nicely as it fills your senses. White's version of "Gazelle" loped along, gracefully coiling and flexing before each jump but never exerting itself and sounding like it could run forever. In the tradition of Henderson's Milestone recording that produced "Gazelle," In Pursuit of Blackness, White grabbed Guarna and Herring in the dressing room just before they were ready to go on stage Saturday night and excitedly explained a last-minute change in the tune's break. The two guitarists played it together incorrectly once, figured it out and practiced it right twice, then said as one, "we got it." When the band finally played it as the final number of the set, Guarna and Herring ripped it up.
No question, it was the killer tune of the set.
***************************************
For the most comprehensive interview ever done with Lenny White, check the article I wrote for AllAboutJazz.com, "Lenny White: Jazz/Rock Collides Again":
************************************** And as for the big question... by the time you read this, there will be but one more chance to see this band of killer-virtuosi jazz/rockers: November 20-21, the Abstract Logix Music Festival, 2010, to be held at the Lincoln Theatre, 126 E. Cabarrus St. between Wilmington St. and Blount St. in the beautiful southern city of Raleigh, North Carolina. In addition to Lenny White and his Anomaly Band, Souvik Dutta, president/founder of Abstract Logix Records and event organizer, has already confirmed jazz/rock giant John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension, the Jimmy Herring Band, Wayne Krantz, Wayne Krantz (ex-STEELY DAN) with Anthony Jackson and Cliff Almond; Alex Machacek Trio with Jeff Sipe (APT Q258) and Neal Fountain; Human Element (Matt Garrison, Scott Kinsey, Arto Tuncboyaciyan); Introducing Ranjit Barot (India's Best Kept Secret on Drums); and an All Star Tribute to John McLaughlin as the Grand Finale.
The Jazz Bakery, one of Los Angeles’ most revered jazz establishments, is still homeless after closing its doors last spring, but it is still alive and living off the fat of the land.
Running a non-profit jazz club that features big national acts and low ticket prices 7 days a week ain’t easy.When your philanthropic landlord dies and the new owner(s) announce they’re turning your club into a furniture store, you need to be imaginative. http://jazzjazzersjazzing.blogspot.com/search?q=ruth+price
What Owner/Chief Bottle Washer Ruth Price has done since May 31 of last year is what she calls a Moveable Feast. Even if there is not a permanent place to hear them, jazz artists line up and play for Ruth’s club wherever it happens to be this week.Regina Carter, Tierney Sutton, Hubert Laws, Mose Allison, Dave Frishberg, John Beasley, Benny Golson and his quartet of Bill Cunliffe, Bob Magnusson and Roy McCurdy, Tomasz Stanko, Antonio Sanchez, Pharaoh Sanders, the list of musicians who support and have been supported since last summer goes on and on.The Jazz Bakery will never die because it lives in their hearts.
This Sunday, August 1st, the Moveable Feast starts with a 3:00 p.m. wine reception at the Silent Movie Theater (611 North Fairfax, Los Angeles, CA 90036) before the curtain goes up at 3:30 p.m. on the Los Angeles premiere of “TheAnatomy of Vince Guaraldi”, a film by Andrew Thomas and Toby Gleason.The film features Dave Brubeck, Dick Gregory, George Winston, Irwin Corey, John Handy, Malcolm Boyd and David Benoit, among others.Leonard Maltin will moderate a Q & A.Tickets are $20.
The promo I received points out to astute observers that despite the name of the theater, the film about Vince Guaraldi is “definitely NOT a silent film.”
Sunday, July 25, 2010
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ANNIE ROSS!
How is jazz legend Annie Ross celebrating her 80th birthday? By performing this Tuesday (and each Tuesday) night at 9:30 in the Metropolitan Room at 34 West 22nd Street in NYC. Imagine that, at a time in life when ma people are inclined to sit in a rocking chair and sip tea, Annie Ross dolls herself up and does the second set at a swanky cabaret while the swells sip at their martinis and enjoy a style of music that few recall, and many fewer still perform. In Ms. Ross's case, it is a brand of musical magic that only she has ever attained. Or to be fair, that she, Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks attained. So in a way, it stands to reason that she keeps performing. Anyone who had the energy to write the crazy, swinging jazz standard “Twisted”, full of its harmonic hairpin turns and rhythmic gear changes, and then sing it, could easily feel the need to eschew artistic quietude sing as regularly as she can. There must have been something in the water supply back in the day, because I recently heard from a New York jazz fan that Jon Hendricks has been fairly active performing as well, and that he and James Moody had engaged in "a scat-sing cutting contest that you wouldn't believe" at the Blue Note last year. At the time, Jon was 83 years old and Moody 87... For ticket prices and directions to the Metropolitan Room: http://www.metropolitanroom.com/component/jcalpro/view/50/98.html
Annie Ross's career was in full swing long before she began work with Dave Lambert and Jon Hendricks, in 1952 penning lyrics for and performing Wardell Gray's "Twisted." After joining forces in 1957 to create the landmark vocal trio Lambert, Hendricks & Ross, they were the premiere jazz vocal group in the world. Along with Hendricks and Lambert, she continued to pioneer the emerging field known as vocalese, the difficult but highly rewarding writing and singing of lyrics to already-composed jazz tunes and helped to make this sophisticated form sensationally popular. Various people are credited (or take credit) for "inventing" vocalese, but no one ever took on the bop harmonies rhythms and did it like Lambert, Hendricks and Ross.
An inspiration to singers from Joni Mitchell and Bette Midler, to Cheryl Bentyne and Janis Siegel and Lorraine Feather, Annie Ross is the undisputed champion.
To a musical queen, long may you reign.
Annie’s 1952 classic, “Twisted,” courtesy of YouTube:
And courtesy of wolfgangsvault.com, Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks and Annie Ross live at the Newport Jazz Festival on July 2, 1960 “Swingin’ ‘til the Girls Come Home” by Oscar Pettiford
Lorraine Feather’s live performances are legendary. Her skills as a lyricist, well known to fans of her recordings of Waller and Ellington material, and recent work like her critically-acclaimed new CD Ages (Jazzed Media, 2010), bloom wildly under the stage lights. Where some performers like to glance sideways with short anecdotes between songs, Feather prefers to be a real raconteur and plunge in headlong, punctuating her insightful musical commentary with tales that are integral to the performance.
As Will Friedwald wrote of her performance at the Algonquin in his New York Sun review of February 8, 2008, “Lorraine Feather is expanding the jazz repertoire in her own idiosyncratic way and showcasing the power of composition as much as the power of performance.”
But despite the great press Feather has always gotten for her live shows, she’s not been much of a road warrior of late.
Part of the reason for this has been logistics. After being based in Los Angeles and performing with pianist/composer Shelly Berg, she and her husband Tony Morales moved to the San Juan Islands north of Seattle, while Berg accepted a position as Dean of the University of Miami’s Frost School of Music. Literally, they’d moved to opposite ends of the continental U.S.
“I've had something of a hiatus from live performing with Shelly. It's challenging to work things out logistically/financially with us so far apart, but we just booked the Lakeshore Jazz Series in Tempe, AZ for February of next year, and we'll be doing more." Their geographic separation has also been an artistic barrier for her, because in a world teeming with jazz pianists, Berg is that uniquely adept stylist whose vast technique and repertoire have enabled him to successfully channel Feather’s ghostly songwriting “partners” like Fats Waller and keep her tidal wave of stride and lyrical intricacies flowing fast enough and accurately enough to support her in performance. Shelly Berg has been a hard act to follow.
But just this last week the lyricist/singer got together with the phenomenally gifted young pianist, Stephanie Trick, for two days of rehearsal. Already considered by many of her peers to be among the best stride pianists in the world when she was but 21 years old, Trick was invited to perform at the 2008 International Stride and Swing Summit in Boswil, Switzerland and has been invited back again this fall.
Feather described their first collaboration with admiring praise, saying “. . . she not only is spectacular but she learned “You're Outa Here” [Feather’s lyricised rendition of Waller’s “The Minor Drag”] for the occasion, transcribing it herself exactly as Dick Hyman played it [on Feather’s recording New York City Drag (Rhombus, 2001)], supporting the melodic or rhythmic variations I did on the original track .”
The result is that she and the 23-yr.-old St.Louis-based phenom are putting together a stride show “we are going to launch in the spring. Irvin Arthur (iarthur@parkavenuetalent.com) of Park Avenue Talent is booking it.”
All of which portends well for thee and me.
"I'm ramping up to do more live singing. I had a great gig June 12th at Bake's, near Seattle, with two terrific Seattle musicians, pianist Randy Halberstadt and bassist Jon Hamar [doing material from Ages] and will be doing a big band thing with the Spokane Jazz Society on September 26th. Russ [Ferrante, composer of the haunting “The Girl with the Lazy Eye” on Ages and founding member of the Yellowjackets] and I are going to be performing in L.A. together before long.”
If you have the opportunity to see Lorraine Feather perform live in one of these venues, don’t hesitate.
She’s also been hard at work writing and recording a new CD.
"The process of doing a new album, with writing involved, takes about a year from starting the first song to the mastering process at the end for me. I have songs in the works with Eddie [Arkin] and Russell, and there's one that's an adaptation of a piece by the Italian pianist Enrico Pieranunzi. There is a concept, which I'd describe as being on the mysterious and trippy side.”
So it’s good news for Lorraine Feather fans, who can look forward to a “mysterious and trippy” concept album, and a year that will feature live performances in small, intimate settings as well as bigger ones, including a big band romp through her rich Ellington-based material. Dates will be posted as they become available.
Stanley Clarke and Lenny White recording a solo withHiromi.
Stanley Clarke was in the studio this past week with producer Lenny White to record some sonic pyrotechnics with Japanese pianist Hiromi and guest saxophonist Bob Sheppard. Clarke's working band were also on hand: RuslanSirota on keyboards, Ronald Bruner, Jr., on drums, and Charles Altura on guitar. This "fiery" (as Clarke aptly described them) band of young guns play their instruments like thrill-seeking street racers and bring it with more than enough horsepower to support Clarke's high-energy musicality.
The diverse tunes featured on the album will include a nugget from Clarke's and White's days with Return To Forever - although I missed getting to hear them record it, White supplied a clue: "Wait 'til you hear what we did with 'No Mystery,'" he said wide-eyed. "It is rocked-out." Amongst the other tunes is a tribute to the great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins penned by Clarke, and a tune written for Clarke by his keyboardist RuslanSirota.
Producer Lenny White and keyboardist RuslanSirota. Asked to describe his composition, Sirota says "it's called 'Soldier.' It's a very story-like piece. When hearing it, you clearly get the different chapters of the journey: the contemplation, the battle, the realization and the hope, and it's all laid out for the bass guitar."
Balancing the seriousness of that, Sirota noted that the Sonny Rollins tribute "is a funkyfied homage" that he thinks "may very well be the happiest tune Stanley ever wrote."
That's saying something. Stanley Clarke has been writing happy songs right from the start, and has written some of the happiest and most memorable jazz tunes ever recorded. By the time he was 26 years old he had written three of them that were destined to become standards: "Light As A Feather," "Silly Putty" and "School Days."
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