Category Archives: Jazz

Artie Shaw

Posted on by

So I was driving down one of the local boulevards on a moonless night, flipping across the Sirius dial looking for something I could stand and having no luck. Then I hit a pothole and out came Artie Shaw. “Blue Skies” even. I got the car stabilized again–for a second there I was a B-17 in Twelve O’Clock High, going down over Stuttgart–and tried to remember between what wives he recorded this. Judging from the hipness of the arrangement, it would have been between Kathleen Winsor and Doris Dowling. I think around 1951.

He’d just busted up that kinda bebop big band of his. Big bands were a hard sell on the road after the Second World War, and his crowd weren’t into that newfangled stuff. Things change, fans don’t. So Artie packed it in, again. He quit music like he quit wives. You can see it in this picture. His ex-wife Ava is glomming onto him like a night’s worth of sex, he’s got a splitting headache worrying about the biz and Lana Turner has just walked into the room.

Ava Gardner and Artie Shaw in 1949

Poor Artie. He should have stayed in the Navy. Air raids were easier than this.

So he cuts the band loose (about the time he cut Kate Winsor loose) and goes back to the old Gramercy 5 thing, plus one, and minus the harpsichord. Swinging little sextet, lots of solo room. Artie Shaw is an underrated jazz player anymore, which is a shame. He certainly proved his mettle on the small group dates. But when he wants to do a big band date by this time he cheats and just pulls in a bunch of studio cats. Results are nice. That’s what this “Blue Skies” was, a studio date with studio players. Driving along in the dark, I was really taken with the extended tenor sax stretch. That’s no old fashioned dance band run. There’s some story telling there. Had to look up the session at home later. It was Herbie Steward, who you likely never heard of. He was one of Woody Herman’s Four Brothers, the phalanx of sax players Woody put out front because they were so goddamn good. Good but, uh, had issues. All the same issue. Herbie’s issue affected his lifetime output more so than brothers Stan Getz and Zoot Sims, but considerably less than brother Serge Chaloff. You have to be a historian to know Serge Chaloff, which is sad. He was a visionary baritone player. He also once drove on a railroad track for a mile without knowing it.  Some guys you don’t let drive. But we’re not talking about the Thundering Herd here, are we. We’re talking about Artie Shaw, his wives, and whatever happened to Herbie Steward. Well he was busy, that Herbie was. One of those 1950’s jazz musicians with two careers. Your ax or your arm, baby, one or the other has to come first. One becomes a way of doing the other. Herbie eventually cleaned up, stuck to the one career, put out a few LP’s, which unfortunately I’ve never heard. At least he had the opportunity to make a comeback. Serge not so much. Though it wasn’t the heroin that killed him. Cancer got him first.

Several years later….I have absolutely no idea where this essay was going. I found it among the drafts.  I just kind of petered out with that last line. It was a good start anyway.

Kevin Kanner

Posted on by

(2013)

Ran into Kevin Kanner last nite. Apparently he’s in town for a brief spell. We reminisced and bitched and told stories you don’t repeat. That guy is such a great jazz drummer. And I mean jazz drummer. You could drop him into a Blue Note session two generations ago and he would swing those mothers like mad. He’s just got that thing, that blues thing, deep down, that goes back all the way to the beginning. He could play with Louis Armstrong in Chicago, I think, or with Lester Young in Kansas City. He could fill in for Jimmy Cobb or Tootie Heath or Art Taylor–especially Art Taylor–in a hard bop New York City. He wouldn’t play like them, he wouldn’t copy them–that’s not what jazz is about, mimicry–but he sure the hell could sit in when they had to sit out for some jazz player’s reason or another, better left unsaid. He could sit in and swing, really swing, and the cats would turn around and nod, just nod, and he’d know he was in the groove, in the pocket, solid. That’s Kevin Kanner. He’s back in New York City now, where his playing always fits in somewhere, uptown, downtown, Brooklyn, wherever the music is cooking. He’s doing well, since he plays more like a New York drummer, and less like one of our own. The players swing back there and experiment out here. Well they experiment back there too, obviously (that’s where it started!), but they also swing hard, way hard, which seems passé among the new jazz generation in L.A. The state of the art here in downtown is just that, art, which is kind of ironic since swinging Kevin Kanner pretty much kickstarted the whole scene when he brought his weekly jam session east from the Mint. It grew and grew into something world class out here, that Blue Whale scene, daring and innovative and full of everything but the old school. Everything but the blues. What would Ray Brown say? Kanner asked once, and apparently Ray Brown would have said go to New York. Which he did. Other drummers, like Zach Harmon and Dan Schnelle and Tina Raymond, filled in nicely and were more attuned to the new vibe. They can be wild or textured or subtle or ethnic and in Harmon’s case especially, absolutely brilliant. They can switch time like you or I switch socks. Which wasn’t Kevin’s thing. Not at all.

I miss him out here, not just because he’s such a swell cat but because when he was behind the kit you’d have no worries at all that this shit was gonna lag, gonna stumble, gonna transform into crazy meters and advanced music theory. No, it’ll just be jazz. That’s all. Just jazz. That’s Kevin Kanner. Just jazz.

5-9-2013

Chuck Manning at Vibrato

Posted on by

(2013)

Last night the wife sez let’s go to Vibrato. It’s way the hell up in Bel Air, where you spend money not even spending money, and there are rich people all around you, balding and important and trophy-wived. Chuck Manning was there with bass and drums, a sax trio, pure jazz, one of those set ups where it’s noisy no matter what you do. It brought out all the Joe Henderson in him, and he wailed nicely, crazy torrents of notes that sailed over the heads of the rich people and bounced off their wine glasses till even they noticed and applauded. The jazzers in the crowd dug it. Loose limbed straight ahead is a hard find in this town anymore. We sat at the bar and talked to the bartender who plays weirdo punk rock on his own time, unbeknownst to the rich people, and pretty waitresses walked by with platters of food that cost more than one of my car payments. It was sticky with humidity even inside, where the vast space between the diners and the ceiling renders air conditioning moot on these Jersey-like summer nights. We sat still and drank and listened. A “Listen Hear” got the crowd moving, swaying balding heads, trophy wives jiggling and jingling. I wish I could remember the title of the next tune but the house bassist Pat Senatore and drummer Kendall Kay locked into a groove that got people really excited. They cooked right through to the end, with a hard bop finish. You think saxophone trios and it always comes down to Sonny Rollins at the Village Vanguard, blowing Caravan for half an hour. This had those moments. It being a restaurant, you can only go so far, Sonny circa 1957 would scare the nice people now. Those were crazy times–crazy places, crazy people, crazy music. Now we take what we can get. And if Chuck Manning can get away with some intense blowing at Vibrato–even though to him it was a cake walk, nothing special–then we’ll take it. Jazz is a special thing, harder and harder to find. And when I find some like this–off the cuff, unplanned, going with the flow–I dig it. Totally.

We’ll be on the Westside again today, though this time it’s a pig roast full of heavy metal guys and intellectuals. Ya never know in this town.

Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section

Posted on by

(2013)

It’s 2013 and the Republicans have closed down the Federal government again. Closed it down tight. Damn. And there’s a cat commenting on the shutdown on The Atlantic‘s website with the most happening alias ever. He calls himself ArtPepperMeetsTheRhythmSection. Now that’s a great user name. No pun intended. I don’t know if I’d trust him around the silverware, but damn, that is one cool freaking appellation.

So of course I dig out the album. Got it playing now. Listen to Miles’ rhythm section happening, seriously happening. Red Garland, Paul Chambers, the awesome Philly Joe Jones. Damn, man. They just showed up and bashed out these tunes. Each track is a gem. Jazz players were so on top of their shit back then. Their lives might be a mess, they might be ditching wives and the Man and contracts, but they were complete masters of their chosen instruments. Perfection, or damn close to it.

And that must have been some post-session hang…. Oh yeah.

Ya know, you listen to Art Pepper blowing his crazy floating unbop bopping shit now, in the summer of 2013, you’ll forget all about our fucked up politics and everything else. Fuck reality, I’ll take the Straight Life. He didn’t, but he sure could blow that thang.

Listen:

“Straight LIfe”
from Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section (1957)

Art Pepper (taking his turn with Stan Kenton, Balboa, CA. 1950) I wish I knew who took this perfect jazz photo.

Art Pepper (taking his turn with Stan Kenton, Balboa, CA. 1950)
I wish I knew who took this perfect jazz photo.

The coolest damn thing

Posted on by

(Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly, 2006)

Sometimes it must seem like we’re rattling off the same names here week after week, but what so special about jazz (or any improvisational music) is that you’re never seeing the same thing twice. That’s the whole point of the stuff. A player might call out the same damn tune every week, but it won’t sound the same as it did the week before, or the week before that, or the week coming up. And more than likely several players across town are calling out the same damn tune on the same night, but once past the head (that is, the patch of melody at the beginning that you’ll recognize) it’s all unexplored country. A more educated writer could explain how and why, but we’ll just say that while you need to know that stuff to play the things, you don’t need it at all to hear it, and to dig it. Just listen as a soloist spins a story through his horn. It might be the prettiest thing you ever heard, or the bluesiest, the saddest, the strangest, the most romantic, the most visceral. But if you listen to it, and then feel it…you’re on to something. You’re on to digging what is to be a jazz fan, and just how good it feels to me moved by a solo, or be amazed at how players—the people on piano, bass, drums, the horns—make interweaving patterns, vibrant dynamic things, sounds you can almost see unfolding before you, and how they all come back together again at the head, that is where the melody of the tune suddenly reasserts itself. And that is the coolest damn thing.

Hipped to a couple books

Posted on by

(Brick’s Picks, LA Weekly, 2006)

And we’ve been hipped to a couple books that’d make some cool xmas gifts ideas. Bari blowing/beatnik looking/mystery writing Skoot Larson’s The No News is Bad News Blues is a fun read; his trumpet playing, hard drinking, weed smoking, record collecting accidental detective Lars Lyndstrom stumbling into a terrorist plot. Fans of Bill Moody’s Evan Horn books will dig it. Moody’s tighter and leaner, but Larson’s storytelling is like a free ranging live jazz session. And if you know San Pedro (or Oslo) at all you will love the settings. Peter Levinson’s Tommy Dorsey: Livin’ in a Great Big Way is a terrific read. The Big Band Era was a whole ‘nother universe, and don’t fall for the “innocent times” stuff our parents/grandparents dropped on us. These guys lived hard, played hard, worked hard, fought hard and (in Dorsey’s case) died hard. The book bear up the legend: T.D. was not an easy man to know, let alone play for (or worse yet, be married to.) But he sure could play some pretty trombone. Those were amazing times, with the music, the arrangers, the tours, the War, the movie stars, the kids, the dancing, the partying, and the segregation and desperate poverty that so many players, white and black, Irish and Jew, rose from. Levinson’s energetic prose brings the era vividly back to life.

Med Flory

Posted on by

(LA Weekly, 2005)

On 52nd Street alto saxophonist Med Flory once gave Charlie Parker his last five dollars. Bird paid Flory back bigtime, though, when Med arranged his solos into Supersax. Bird…Med’s eyes light up. The wisecracks cease. He’s one of the kids who heard “Ko-Ko” and flipped. Parker revealed whole new dimensions, musical universes. So what if bop drove the folks away? The hell with popular shit. On this night John Heard will anchor the rhythm section, guests will sit in, Carl Saunders will play miraculous trumpet. The sets will be bop, blues, maybe a casual vocal. Med’ll sit on his beat-up sax case, take a deep breath and blow like a crazy mother, eyes wild, lost in progressions. Then, remembering it’s his 79th birthday, he’ll come up for air, wiping the sweat from his eyes. “I just love to play, man” he’ll say, as the pianist unravels the melody.

Jazz just seemed alive.

Posted on by

 

(pulled from an emailed essay, 2004)

 

I came across a great stash of jazz albums on Saturday for real cheap. One of them was a bunch of Jimmie Lunceford sides from the late thirties and early forties. I was listening to it Sunday morning, and reading the notes that talked about Central Avenue and the Dunbar Hotel, and Gerald Wilson, and on the back there is a great shot of the band from 1941, including Snooky Young on trumpet. By that afternoon I had completely forgotten all that , of course, in the middle of all the people and music and heat of the day at the Central Avenue Jazz Festival. Even while walking through the lobby of the Dunbar Hotel and looking at the pictures it hadn’t occur to me. The Gerald Wilson orchestra took the stage a few hours later, and during the first number, a Basie tune, Gerald Wilson calls out the first soloist: Snooky Young. He stood up there in the back and blew hard, and with that plunger in hand his horn was talking, telling some old, old stories. I’d seen Snooky Young there before, of course, probably every time I’d seen the Orchestra play this Festival. But having seen that picture that very morning, and listening to him solo on that old wax and then here in person, in front of me: it was different. That ephemeral connection to the old days, what I’d known only as history, suddenly became very real. Maybe it was the sunset breeze kicking up but for a minute there I felt a chill. Like watching an old black and white photo turn into color and start moving. Making history real. Jazz just seemed alive, all of it.

Jazz and hockey

Posted on by

 

(2002) 

A couple seasons ago I dropped by a local spot called Jax to see the Eldad Tarmu Quartet. He plays the vibes, and I’d come across his great Aluminum Forest in the local record shop for two bits, so I was thrilled to see them at Jax just down the street and over the river in Glendale. As the band was setting up the television behind the stage was showing a Kings game. The bartender had forgotten to switch it off and as Eldad & Co. went into some crazily tempo’d piece I continued watching the game behind them. It was a perfect soundtrack. I had always suspected it, and had watched games soundlessly at home with jazz on the stereo, but here was live proof. At one point it was four-on-four on the ice that matched the four players on stage who, just for a moment, were actually trading fours. I watched astonished. Eventually the bartender switched the television off and I concentrated on the actual performance. But man, the energy of small group bop and hockey was such a perfect fit, at least to this addled mind. Hell, it was beautiful.

Some cat copped my shit

Posted on by

 

(2013)

 

Drag, man, sorry you lost your shit but that shit went up somebody’s arm a long time ago. Can’t trust nobody nowadays. Cats robbing each other blind. Turn yer back for a minute and your shit is gone. I knew a cat so messed up he ripped off his own horn in the middle of his own solo. Pawned it, scored, fixed, stole another cat’s horn, pawned that, got his own horn back and finished his solo before the drummer even knew he was gone. True story, man. Anyway the cat drops out for the bass solo, nods out, wakes up in time for the drum solo. But there is no drum solo. Someone had stolen the drummer. So he grabs his horn again and gets ready to blow but nothing. The trumpeter had stolen his solo. He’s playing it like he owns the thing. Then my man looks up and sees his wife leaving with a tenor player. Shit. So he blows a solo he stole from the tenor player, and the bass player comes in, and the drummer is there again, and they take the tune back to the head, except someone stole that, so they just did a quick “Salt Peanuts” and went out to connect.

But I hope you get your shit back. How much you say it’s worth?