According to Miles Davis, the history of jazz can be told in four words; here are the first two.
Louis Armstrong, “Dinah,” live, Copenhagen, 1933
What did it sound like when Beethoven, seated at the piano, played Bach? For that we have to use our imagination. For this we don’t.
Thelonious Monk plays Duke Ellington, live, Berlin, 1969
“Satin Doll”
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“Sophisticated Lady”
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“Caravan”
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“Solitude”
(Yo, Michael: Thanks for the tip!)
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lagniappe
[T]he only time I’ve ever seen Monk act like a little boy and looking up to somebody [was in the presence of Duke Ellington]. That was his idol.—Joe Termini (quoted in Robin D. G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original [2009])
A vocal coach can help with many things—intonation, breathing, range—but not the most important thing: personality.
Blossom Dearie, “Surrey with the Fringe on Top,” live (TV broadcast), early 1960s
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[Blossom Dearie’s voice] would scarcely reach the second storey of a doll’s house.—Whitney Balliett
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[Blossom Dearie’s] the only white woman who ever had soul.—Miles Davis
Why take a straight path when you can take a crooked one?
Sheila Jordan (with Steve Kuhn, piano; David Finck, bass; Billy Drummond, drums; Mark Feldman and Barry Finclair, violin; Vincent Lionti, viola; Harold Birston, cello), “Autumn in New York,” live, 2008, New York (on her 80th birthday)
captivating, adj. capturing interest as if by a spell. E.g., Betty Carter.
Betty Carter (with Cyrus Chestnut, piano), “Once Upon A Summertime,” live, Japan, 1993
(Watch how she moves when giving way to Cyrus Chestnut’s piano solo [3:40-54]: the elegance of a dancer, the dignity of a queen.)
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If you’re sitting in that audience ready to fight me from the very beginning, I’m going to have a hard time getting to you. But if you’ve got a heart at all, I’m going to get it.—Betty Carter
You can talk about her exquisite phrasing: the way she hovers around the beat. But that sort of musical shoptalk barely scratches the surface. Other singers may be able to express joy, or pain, or regret, or longing, or other feelings. But how many other singers are able to convey so many different emotions all at once?
Billie Holiday (with Jimmy Rowles, piano), “My Man,” live
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I hate straight singing. I have to change a tune to my own way of doing it. That’s all I know.
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No two people on earth are alike, and it’s got to be that way in music or it isn’t music.
—Billie Holiday
In the public imagination, the guitar’s associated with freedom and individuality. The musical reality’s different. Guitarists travel in herds; few stray from the pack. One who has gone his own way is this man, who’s played with everyone from Muddy Waters (as a session musician for Chicago-based Chess Records) to Miles Davis (as a member of his group [1973-1975]). He employs a variety of unusual tunings and effects. He sounds like no one else.
Pete Cosey, guitar
“Calypso Frelimo” (excerpt), Pete Cosey’s Children of Agharta (JT Lewis, drums; Gary Bartz and John Stubblefield, saxophones & flute; Matt Rubano, bass; Johnny Juice, turntables; Baba Israel, words and beats; Kyle Jason, voice; Bern Pizzitola, guitar; Wendy Oxenhorn, harmonica), live, 2002, New York
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Live (with Melvin Gibbs, bass; JT Lewis, drums; Johnny Juice, congas and turntables)
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He’s [Pete Cosey’s] the guy who, after Hendrix, showed you how ‘out’ you could go with guitar playing, particularly in the improvised context.—Greg Tate
Is there any greater joy than to hear something fresh?
Steve Lehman (saxophonist, composer, bandleader), talking and playing, 2009
Want more? Here (click on the “listen” tab).
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. . . the most important thing, and the most important element of the music, and the most important compositional step is deciding who it is that you’re going to work with—even more so than what notes they’re going to play, or what context you’re going to put them in.—Steve Lehman
genius at work
Thelonious Monk with saxophonist Charlie Rouse, working out a number, “Boo Boo’s Birthday,” during a recording session, 1967
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Thelonious Monk (with Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Ben Riley, drums; Larry Gales, bass), “Boo Boo’s Birthday” (Underground [Columbia], 1968)
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reading table
One of the great discoveries I made in college, besides Bach (10/19/09, 10/24/09, 12/25/09) and Blind Willie Johnson (11/15/09) and Bill Evans (11/18/09) and Hound Dog Taylor (10/30/09), was John Berryman. Hearing him read his poetry, not long before he died (jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis), changed my life. Really. That night made me realize, in ways that I never had before, just how lively and surprising and exciting poetry could be. It made me realize, too, that what a great poem offers is an experience—one you can’t get anywhere else. And so I have Berryman to thank not only for his own poems (especially The Dream Songs [which would be on my desert-island packing list]) but also for making Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wislawa Szymborska, Charles Simic, et al., such important figures in my life. Just as my life would be immeasurably poorer without Thelonious Monk (11/2/09, 11/25/09, today) and Vernard Johnson (12/6/09) and Morton Feldman (11/7/09, 12/5/09) and Lester Bowie (9/8/09, 10/28/09), so too would it be without them.
This recording, for all its technical shortcomings (headphones help), captures some of what I heard in Berryman that night almost 40 years ago. Blustery and grandiose and vulnerable, jazzy and funny: he was all these things—and more.
This is not a cultural occasion, ladies and gentlemen, in case you were misled by anyone. This is an entertainment.—John Berryman
John Berryman (1914-1972), live, Iowa City, 1968
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
John Lee Hooker, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dinu Lipatti: where else would you find these three artists together, performing back to back, besides a cyberstage?
John Lee Hooker, “Blues For Christmas” (1949)
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Rahsaan Roland Kirk (tenor saxophone, manzello, flute, stritch), “We Free Kings” (1961)
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Dinu Lipatti, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Johann Sebastian Bach/Hess transcription (1947)
music clip of the day 