piano | music clip of the day

Thursday, 6/24/10

Greatest prison band of all time?

No contest.

Who could beat the one that Art Pepper and this guy—both followed Charlie Parker down the path of heroin addiction—led in the 1960s at San Quentin?

Frank Morgan (alto saxophone, with Claude Black, piano; Clifford Murphy, bass; Sean Dobbins, drums), “Well You Needn’t,” live, Ohio (Toledo), 2006

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The greatest big band I ever played with was in San Quentin. Art Pepper and I were proud of that band. We had Jimmy Bunn and Frank Butler [whom Jo Jones called “the greatest drummer in the world”], and some other musicians who were known and some who weren’t, but they could play. We played every Saturday night for what they called a Warden’s Tour, which showed paying visitors only the cleanest cell blocks and exercise yards. But people would take that tour just to hear the band.

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Art and I played more when we were in San Quentin together than when we were on the outside.

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Art led the way for me to recover. He got out of prison before me and started traveling all over the world before I did. He showed me by example that it could be done, and I’ll always love him for that.

—Frank Morgan

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Monday, 6/21/10

My favorite alto sax player?

There are days when I’d say this is the guy.

Art Pepper, September 1, 1925-June 15, 1982

“Red Car” (excerpt), live (Art Pepper: Notes From A Jazz Survivor [1982])

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“Mambo Koyama,” live, Italy, 1981

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“What’s New?” (1956)

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“Over the Rainbow” (1982)

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The epigraph to Straight Life: The Story of Art Pepper by Art and Laurie Pepper (1979):

What is the use of talking and there is no end of talking,
There is no end of things in the heart.

—Ezra Pound [“Exile’s Letter,” from the Chinese poet Li Po; as punctuated in SL]

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Friday, 6/18/10

No one’s played blues harmonica more delicately, more lyrically.

“Shakey,” “Mumbles”—no one’s had weirder nicknames.

No one else in my years at Alligator Records (back in the 1970s), where I worked with a lot of musicians who drank more in a day than most folks do in a month, managed to do this: trip over the drum set, right in the middle of a performance (at Notre Dame), and fall over onstage.

Big Walter Horton, live, Copenhagen, 1970

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2010

Thursday, 6/17/10

With the greatest artists, even the most familiar pieces sound as if you were hearing them for the first time.

Beethoven, Piano Sonata No. 14 in C# minor, Op. 27, No. 2 (“Moonlight”), 1801/Artur Schnabel, piano, 1933

1st & 2nd Movements

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3rd Movement

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The magnitude of his [Schnabel’s] creative accomplishments left technical considerations far behind. His Beethoven had incomparable style, intellectual strength, and phrasing of aristocratic purity. The important thing was that even when his fingers failed him, his mind never did. Schnabel was always able to make his playing interesting. A mind came through—a logical, stimulating, sensitive mind. And when Schnabel had his fingers under control, which was more often than not in his literature of Mozart, Beethoven and Schubert, he took his listeners to an exalted level. . . . There were no tricks, no excesses; just brain, heart and fingers working together with supreme knowledge.—Harold C. Schonberg, The Great Pianists (1963)

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Want more of Beethoven’s piano sonatas?

No. 21 (“Waldstein”)/Emil Gilels

No. 23 (“Appassionata”)/Solomon

No. 32 /Claudio Arrau

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art beat

At the risk of repeating myself, the Matisse exhibit at Chicago’s Art Institute closes Sunday (then opens next month at New York’s Museum of Modern Art). How many other opportunities will you have to see this stuff?

Henri Matisse:

Seek the strongest color effect possible . . . the content is of no importance.

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After a half-century of hard work and reflection the wall is still there.

Bathers with a Turtle (1908)

The Blue Window (1912)

Nude with a White Scarf (1909)

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2010

Wednesday, 6/16/10

movies/part 3

Once upon a time, before the Gulf oil spill, before Katrina, there was a city . . .

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New Orleans (1947)

Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong

“Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?”

Want more Billie Holiday? Here. Here.

More Louis Armstrong? Here.

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The impact of the oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill now soiling the Louisiana shoreline was felt far inland on Thursday as P&J Oyster Company, the country’s oldest oyster processor and distributor, ceased its shucking operations.

“The bottom line is that the guys that we purchase from are not working,” said Sal Sunseri, referring to the oyster harvesters who’ve been idled by the mass closure of harvesting areas and freshwater diversions. “Today’s our last day of shucking.”

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“Having the guy down the street deliver oysters that were shucked just that morning to our doorstep is an amazing thing,” said John Besh, who featured P&J Oysters at his five New Orleans area restaurants. “The relationship is so valuable, knowing that I can count on them to source the best oysters from the saltiest areas and deliver them in a consistent, uniform manner.”

“They provide wonderful oysters,” said Darin Nesbit, chef at the Bourbon House, whose relationship with P&J is so tight Sal Sunseri helped shuck oysters the first night the restaurant opened following Hurricane Katrina. “Even in times of trouble, they’ve always taken care of us.”

P&J was started in 1876 by John Popich, a Croatian immigrant who took on partner Joseph Jurisich at the turn of the century. In 1921, Popich and Jurisich purchased a shucking house at the corner of Toulouse and North Rampart streets. Alfred Sunseri, the current owners’ grandfather, who was married to Popich’s cousin, joined the company soon after.

—Brett Anderson, “P&J looks to bring oysters in from the West Coast for the first time In its 134 years,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 6/10/10

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mail

You’re right, not only can’t you lip-synch this stuff; you can’t really sing it if you don’t know it in your heart. That’s why it’s sooooo good. [The Pilgrim Jubilees, 6/13/10]

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2010

Tuesday, 6/15/10

movies/part 2

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Stormy Weather (1943)

Cab Calloway and His Orchestra; Nicholas Brothers, dancers; “Jumpin’ Jive”

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Fred Astaire told the [Nicholas] brothers that the “Jumpin’ Jive” number in Stormy Weather was the greatest number he had ever seen on film. He would have been more impressed had he known that the choreography was filmed all in one take.

—Constance Valis Hill, Tap Dancing America: A Cultural History (2010)

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Want more tap-dancing?

Here (Will Gaines).

Here (Marilyn Miller).

Here (Teddy Hale, Gregory Hines, Will Gaines).

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2010

Monday, 6/14/10

movies/part 1

I feel a rhythmic brainstorm comin’ on . . .

—Slim Gaillard

Hellzapoppin’ (1941)

Slim Gaillard, piano, guitar; Slam Stewart, bass; Rex Stewart, drums; Elmer Fane, clarinet; Jap Jones, trombone; C.P. Johnston, drums; Harlem Congeroos, dancers

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2010

Friday, June 11, 2010

music to levitate by

Dizzy Gillespie & Louis Armstrong, “Umbrella Man,” live (TV broadcast), 1959

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2010

Saturday, June 5, 2010

replay: a clip too good for just one day

If you want to stay right where you are, don’t even bother with this clip. But if, instead, you’d like to go somewhere you may never have been before, well, this might be just the ticket.

Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006), Three Etudes, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano

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I listen to all kinds of music—new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.

—Gyorgy Ligeti (whose influences included not only the usual suspects [Chopin, Debussy, et al.] but also Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans and the Rainforest Pygmies and fractal geometry)

(Originally posted 10/6/09.)