Category Archives: Jazz

Harry James’ pad

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My wife was just reading aloud from an article in the L.A. Times about the Bert Lahr Estate going for a cool $28.5 million. Beside the fact that I can’t figure out how an old vaudevillian could afford to have an estate in 1941 (he couldn’t have made that much money off of Wizard of Oz in those days, could he?), the place was also owned by Betty Grable and Harry James. I don’t know how long the two lived there, but I was dying to see what kind of life a jazz trumpeter could have during the swing era. In fact, even though his wife was a screen idol, he might have raked in more dough…those swing stars made money by the truck load back then.

So I took thirty seconds and found the address, and it’s worth taking a look on Google maps satellite view. The pad (hey, it may be enormous but it’s still a jazz player’s pad) has probably been expanded somewhat since then, maybe not all the outbuildings were there in the 1940’s. Still…there isn’t a trumpet player alive today that makes that kind of money. Not Wynton. Not Chuck Mangione. Not even Chris Botti. It’s not even imaginable.

Harry James and Betty Grable, 1943.

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Red Carpet

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(2013)

Had pictures taken on the red carpet again last night. That’s Hollywood. You show up to an event as a bum. Well dressed, nice car, but still a bum. You hang around the somebodies and drink expensive free wine poured by a tall gorgeous thing named Melinda. I didn’t ask her name, she offered it. Probably because I was the only one tipping. More beautiful things slip silently around the room, bearing platters of edibles you can’t identify, usually. Never admit it, though. Never a what the hell is that, lady? Just take, eat, and thank her.  Every one around you knows everyone around you except you, it seems, then you know everyone around you too, for a moment, then you move to another part of the room seeking more oxygen and less carbon dioxide and don’t know anyone around you all over again. You watch. The dudes look cool, almost all of them, they got it. And there are far too many gorgeous dames for such a smallish room. Art everywhere, mostly musicians in photos and portraits, and album covers. This Aladdin Sane really stands out, as does Miles Davis in a grey suit, looking bad ass. There’s Hendrix over there. The Beatles. Stones. The sixties seem to dominate everything still, and always will. My time not so much. The seventies were too underground and small. Oh well. Don’t dwell on it, not here. Lay off the moody intellectual crap and get busy schmoozing. Meet new people, find unexpected connections, actually have to hand out business cards, how droll. This is a Miles Davis party, yet another one, he’s a whole party industry, and he’s not even around to stand us up. There’s a book, Miles Davis, the Collected Artwork, lovingly assembled by son Erin Davis and nephew Vincent Wilburn Jr., and it’s a vast thing, a superb coffee table tome so heavy you could kill someone with it, like in a murder mystery. People crowd around the table. It’s a hit and they’re grabbing them at fifty bucks a pop. One guy struggled with three, had he dropped one he would have smashed toes, but he didn’t. Look around again…there’s Summer Watson looking lovely, been ages, big hug. She’s with John Altman who knows everyone in the known hip universe and he did here too, the Miles Davis offspring, Wah Wah Watson, everybody. He offered introductions. I demurred. No Idea why. The crowd grew and grew. I hid in the back room a bit where there was air and remarkable jazz record collection, every time I pulled out an album at random, it was classic. I asked about them. The gallery owner (Sam Milgrom, a cool guy) had run a record store in Chicago and moved out here and opened this place, Mr. Musichead Gallery. They have a nice website, but in real life they’re a great little gallery a couple doors down from the Guitar Center. Rock stars past and present probably wander in here and buy something for the studio wall. I wanted to buy the Miles Davis LP cover. I didn’t (well, couldn’t). Back into the crowd. The deejay had tried valiantly to play acoustic Miles but gave up. I heard Bitches Brew later. Began to recognize people now. They nod, I nod back. Back at the table I flip dreamily through the book again. The art is really striking. The kind of thing a jazz lover buys himself for Christmas. But alas, it’s time to leave. The wine was too fine. And free. Out the door, through, we were ordered onto the red carpet. Smile! We smiled. A half dozen quick snaps. The valet brought round the car, and back we were, bums again.  What an odd world Hollywood is. You can almost get used to it.

And I swore I would never write about the Shaggs, again

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(2015)

So I’m outside the pad here and a car goes past blasting My Pal Foot Foot. Loud. Way loud. Even set off the (admittedly hair trigger) alarm on the neighbor’s SUV. I bet that never happened in your neighborhood, a whooping old school car alarm set off by the Shaggs. I bet it never even happened in your universe. It did here, in mine. Terrified, I ran inside, shut the curtains and waited for the Four Horsemen. They never came of course. Instead I’ve had the Shaggs bouncing off the inside of my skull all afternoon. A shambling, down beat stuttering, in tune only on Jupiter (or beyond) kind of earworm, alleviated only by the world’s greatest trumpeter next door stretching A Night in Tunisia on the rack. The tune cracks, bleeds notes, then dies a descending death where the bridge ought to be. I make the sign of the cross and light a candle.

And now this post is the second time I’ve written about the Shaggs. Here was the first.

Clarinet

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I knew a guy that learned to play the clarinet, got married eight times, and lived forever, almost.  But was he happy? If he’d played bassoon, it would be moot. If he’d played the trumpet, it would be mute, at least on the ballads. The lesson is you don’t sleep with Ava Gardner playing the bassoon. Not at the same time, anyway. And if that’s what makes you happy, be my guest, learn to play the clarinet. You’ll never make a living at it, but then you don’t make a living writing either. But at least writing doesn’t bother the neighbors. Continue reading →

Charlie Parker

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I just saw this picture of Charlie Parker on Facebook:

Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker’s funeral.

He’s in the box. I see Leonard Feather there, a pall bearer. Charlie Mingus watches from the church door. That was the day they buried Charlie Parker.

Charlie Parker. The man that changed everything in jazz. Everything. There was jazz. Then there was Charlie Parker. And then there was a new jazz. All the jazz before Charlie Parker was rendered obsolescent, unless it could deal with Charlie Parker. The “Now’s the Time” that’s playing here, in my room? It was war. Revolution. A scythe. Either you played it like Bird played it, or you settled into the big band circuit.  There you become instant history, you were nostalgia. Now was the time and you weren’t from Now. You were Then. Rarely does a cultural change happen with such annihilating suddenness. Charlie Parker was the Revolution brought to music, as merciless as Lenin. Continue reading →

On the Sunny Side of the Street

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It happened again. I’m listening over and over to Dizzy Gillespie’s incredible take on Sunny Side of the Street. Sonny Stitt takes the first solo, then Diz, and then Sonny Rollins, copping his lines from Louis Armstrong’s classic solo on his thirties take on the tune. Listen and you can almost hear Louis’s bluesy trumpet…this is one of my favorite Sonny Rollins solos. Then comes the best part — Dizzy’s perfect vocal. When I sing this song to myself hoping no one can hear, it’s this one I try and sing. Hell, it even taught me how to write about jazz. If ya wanna write about jazz, I told myself, ya gotta write in jazz. Otherwise you’re just another rock critic. So I tried to write like Dizzy talks/sings the lyric here. His phrasing, his timing, the punctuation he drops like bombs bouncing off a bass drum. Because this is the shit, man. This is jazz, this is bebop, this is the attitude, this is a whole fucked up old world opening up wide and you walk right on through, doing your own thing. And that, people, is what makes cool so cool…the gold dust at your feet (a metaphorical gold dust, but gold dust none the less) and you’re on the sunny, not the shady, but the sunny side of the street.

If you can dig that..

“On The Sunny Side of The Street”
Dizzy Gillespie trumpet, Sonny Stitt and Sonny Rollins saxes, Ray Bryant piano, Tommy Bryant bass, Charlie Parsip drums. Recorded in NYC, December 19, 1957.

Sonny Side Up

Sonny Side Up

Mostly White People Miles Davis

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I keep seeing stuff about Mostly Other People Do the Killing’s Kind of Blue and I keep thinking Australian Pink Floyd, who’ve made their own killing playing Dark Side of the Moon note for note for people who really ought to know better. Maybe this is the same thing. They’re much better musicians the Australian Pink Floyd (saxophonist Jon Irabagon is an especially fine player), and their Kind of Blue is more Kind of Blue than the Australian Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon is Dark Side of the Moon, but we’re talking textures here. Both have all the notes right. And that’s what people are looking for, the notes. And that could be a lot of people. They really could make a killing at this. Mostly White People Miles Davis playing Kind of Blue, just like the album. At the Wiltern before you know it. Continue reading →

Sometimes words work

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So we watched an inspired, passionate Phil Ranelin set at the Watts Towers Jazz Festival on Sunday; it swept the crowd despite the amateur antics of the sound guy. Wonderful stuff. Pablo Calogero does amazing things on the soprano sax without ever venturing into the overwrought preciousness that afflicts that horn. What a wonderful player. Phil’s trombone playing is like expressionist watercolors, gorgeous and imaginative and just a tad out, and the alto player whose name escapes me was superb as well, just a hint of dry, a fine soloist. Don Littleton was on drums, good as always and smiling as the bassist nailed it over and over…I’m afraid I wasn’t being a journalist–been avoiding it–and got neither his name nor the pianist’s. The soundman somehow lost all power to the PA halfway through the set so the horn players had to really belt there for a stretch, it worked. Eventually the mics came back on (though the soundman didn’t seem to tell the musicians…who had to figure out which were live and which dead all by themselves….)  Then we headed way the hell out to Altadena for a BBQ and ran into Winston Byrd in the local Ralphs. He was shopping, not blowing high notes on the trumpet–that would have woken up the customers–but jazz, apparently, is everywhere. Or jazz musicians are everywhere.

As are words. Kamau Daooud was the emcee, if he read any of his own superb stuff (“each morning i read the newspaper/ and weep into a pot of coffee/ i muffle my whispered screaming/ with the music of the masters/ i find religion there/ rocking in ecstasy/ to the heartbeats of loved ones”) I missed it. (Look for The Language of Saxophones. I treasure my signed copy.) But I did have my mind blown by a poet at Watts, which doesn’t happen often. Continue reading →

Home is where the floor is

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Threw a mess of Monk in the changer and let it spin, just like him, come to think of it. Will be hearing Charlie Rouse in my sleep. OK with me. But getting ready to write a book review and I needed to soak my head in Monk, since he’s in the book, everywhere, weird and brilliant and spinning and not talking and grunting and maybe high a little too much. Being Monk, just Monk, pure Monk, monkishly Monk. Monk.

Green Chimneys was it, the last tune, and after Green Chimneys all was silent except the water trickling through the aquarium filter–the fish are moving but silent–and the sounds of these words coming out the keys, tap tap tappity tap. Tap. In the middle of the big bad city and all you can here is the tap of words, letter by letter, tap tap tap. Continue reading →

Charmaine Clamor

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Heard several tracks in progress from Charmaine Clamor’s new recording last night. Quite a selection of tunes–none of the usual jazz standards at all. Instead there’s a remarkable take on “Imagine” (a tune that rarely survives covering) propelled by some really striking rhythmic piano by Laurence Hobgood. There’s a surprising “O Shenandoah”, a George Harrison tune, a Carole King, a take (in Spanish) on a Mercedes Sosa tune, which she nails, and at long last she’s recorded her knock out interpretation of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”. Think we heard eight tunes in all, none of them straight copies or scatting jazz jams. Each is a wholly new interpretation. Originality and creativity and great playing coming together. Laurence Hobgood’s arrangements and piano are deep, he’s taken her to a whole new level, and Charmaine matches/surpasses. Very passionate vocals even by her standard–that’s always been her thing, the passion–and she’s showing subtleties untapped till now. The sound is full and warm and rich. This thing has crossover potential I think (KCRW and that end of the dial definitely) without selling out to commercialism even one iota. Ernie Watts by the way, sits in and kills it, and drummer Abe Lagrimas picks up the ukulele in about as uncliched way as you can imagine. One of my favorite pianists around town, Andy Langham, even takes the bench for a couple numbers. And while I can’t say enough about Hobgood’s presence here, it’s Charmaine’s record through and through, it’s her feel, even on the instrumental passages it never gets away from her.  Anyway, I totally dug it. This is major label stuff if I ever heard it.

Charmaine Clamor (photo by Maan Palmiery off of charmaineclamor.com)

Charmaine Clamor (photo by Maan Palmiery off of charmaineclamor.com)