At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.
—Miles Davis
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
“C Jam Blues,” 1942
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“Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” 1943
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.
No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.
Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?
Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
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I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
Hearing John Berryman read his poetry changed my life, as I saida while back. I was in college at the time. A year later, he was dead—a suicide (jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis, where he lived and taught). Here, in Dublin in 1967, he reads one of his Pulitzer-Prize-winning Dream Songs (29). Drunk, mannered, idiosyncratic: yes, yes, yes. Obscure at times to the point of opacity: yes. But also (to these ears) exquisitely controlled, deeply moving, utterly unforgettable.
The sound quality may be pretty raggedy, but that hardly matters—this is history.
Albert Ayler, tenor saxophone (“Love Cry,” “Truth Is Marching In,” “Our Prayer”), live, John Coltrane’s funeral, St. Peter’s Lutheran Church, New York, July 21, 1967
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Click for a clearer image.
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Pinelawn Memorial Park, Farmingdale, New York
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Trane was the father. Pharoah was the son. I was the holy ghost.—Albert Ayler
This guy’s one of the most lyrical players and composers around.
(He also happens to have paranoid schizophrenia.)
Tom Harrell, flugelhorn/Tom Harrell Quintet
“Rhythm-A-Ning,” live, France (Paris), 2008
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“In the Infinite” (by TH), live, Italy (Sorrento), 2008
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“Dancin’ Around” (by TH), live, Brazil (Sao Paulo), 2003
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I’m posting this next piece with mixed feelings. Talking about Harrell’s psychiatric condition can distract from what’s most important—his music. On the other hand, what he’s been able to accomplish says a lot not only about him but also about the power of music.
If I could listen to only one singer for the rest of my life, she’d be the one.
No one gives you more of life.
Inessentials? No one offers fewer.
Moment by moment, no one is more enthralling.
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Billie Holiday
“The Blues Are Brewin’,” with Louis Armstrong (New Orleans, 1947)
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“Fine and Mellow,” with Ben Webster (ts), Lester Young (ts), Vic Dickenson (trbn), Gerry Mulligan (bs), Coleman Hawkins (ts), Roy Eldridge (trmpt), live (TV broadcast), 1957
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“What A Little Moonlight Can Do,” with Mal Waldron (p), live (TV broadcast), 1958
BILLIE HOLIDAY BIRTHDAY BROADCAST : APRIL 7th, 2010
Ninety-five years after her birth, on April 7th, 2010, WKCR will dedicate all programming to Billie Holiday. Born Elinore Fagan in Baltimore, Holiday learned songs by Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith despite the instability and tragedy of her childhood. In 1929, she teamed up with tenor sax player Kenneth Hollan, slowly building her reputation as a vocalist. She replaced Monette Moore at a club called “Covan’s” on West 132 Street in 1932. When producer John Hammond came to see Moore, he was instead captivated by Holiday. He secured a record deal for her, and she recorded two tracks with Benny Goodman. She soon began to record under her own name, collaborating with the greatest artists of the swing era. With pianist Teddy Wilson, she manipulated the melody of dull pop songs for jukeboxes, transforming them into jazz standards, and she courageously recorded “Strange Fruit” with Commodore records when Columbia rejected the sensitive subject matter. Though her career was strained by substance abuse and heartbreak, her voice did not deteriorate. As she inscribed the catastrophes of her life on the texture of her voice, it became only more powerful, more haunting. On April 7th, we will examine the life of this great, mysterious artist, but most importantly, we will listen to her voice.—WKCR-FM
Act I: Playing for change on New York City street corners and subway platforms, without a regular home, for 20 years.
Act II: Performing at nightclubs, concert halls, and festivals around the world.
That’s a life story no one would believe. But it’s the one this guy has lived.
Charles Gayle Trio, live, Russia (St. Petersburg)
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The challenge of free jazz is to create coherent, compelling music without such obvious devices as melody, recurring chord sequences or a steady beat. It’s a challenge that has defeated many a virtuoso since the free-jazz heyday of the 1960’s. But Charles Gayle, a tenor saxophonist, is carving out a free jazz that is muscular, impassioned, clearly structured and wonderfully volatile. . . . Mr. Gayle’s trio made music to move mountains by.—Jon Pareles, New York Times
That’s not something you think about with a musician.
But this guy, who’s celebrating his 85th birthday with a sold-out Carnegie Hall concert, is so deaf that as a child he was mistaken for retarded.
James Moody, saxophone & flute
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How were you able to become a musician?
Well, I hear what I hear. I can hear low pitches but I can’t hear high pitches. That’s why I don’t play high on the flute and I don’t play piccolo. I can’t hear them. I have to really listen for the high notes. And that’s why I sound like I have a lisp. But I don’t have a lisp, I mean a speech impediment. It’s ’cause I don’t hear S’s. I can’t hear them.—James Moody
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