Sunday, August 29, 2010

100 Years of Recorded Jazz … well, almost!

This post was originally published on August 29, 2010.

Given the fact that we are now four years closer, I thought it might be fun to have another look at "the birth of Jazz."

Hope to be able to re-post it again three years from now!

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.


God willin’ and the creek don’t rise, in less than seven [7] years, Jazz recordings will be celebrating their 100th anniversary.

Of course, we are hopeful that we will still be here on February 26, 2017 to commemorate the making of these first Jazz recordings, but we are also mindful of the admonition in the following Irish Proverb: “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans.”

On February 26, 1917, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded Livery Stable Blues and Dixie Jass Band One-Step.  Available for sale on March 17, 1917 at a cost of 75 cents, Victor Recording #18255 was the first Jazz record ever issued.

In anticipation of this eventful day, and as a means of spending some time musing about the early years of the music, the editorial staff at JazzProfiles has put together the following audio-video tribute to the creators of Early Jazz. 

The soundtrack is After You’ve Gone played by alto saxophonists Charlie Mariano – Jerry Dodgion and their sextet that includes Victor Feldman on vibes, Jimmy Rowles on piano, bassist Monty Budwig and drummer Shelly Manne. 


The track is from their Beauties of 1918 [World Pacific WP 1245] which is made up of a collection of tunes that were popular in and around the Unites States’ entry and involvement in the First World War [1917-1918].


Checkout the improvised-in-unison chorus that begins at 4:17 and which is used to close out the tune instead of a restatement of the melody.

The following thoughts by writer-musician Richard Sudhalter may help put Jazz from this early period in its history into a broader context:

“The ‘Great War’ left a new generation of disillusioned, worldly-wise Americans, determined to enjoy the pleasures of youth, and damn the consequences.

As John F. Carter’s oft-quoted declaration in the September 1920 Atlantic Monthly so eloquently put it:

The older generation had certainly pretty-well ruined this world before passing it on to us. They gave us this thing; knocked to pieces, leaky, red-hot, threatening to blow-up; and then they are surprised that we don’t accept it with the same attitude of pretty, decorous enthusiasm with which they received it, ‘way back in the eighties.

What better vehicle to express the indignation and sense of independence those words implied than five musical roughnecks [The Original Dixieland Jazz Band] from down south, making such a racket that Mom and Pop, and just about everyone else over the age of twenty-five, retreated in horror and dismay? Rock and roll, 1918 style.”

The above quotation [pp.18-19] is taken from Mr. Sudhalter’s Lost Chords: White Musicians and Their Contributions to Jazz 1915 – 1945 [New York: Oxford University Press, 1999].

Much like Early Jazz, because of its emphasis on the contributions of White musicians, Lost Chords itself caused quite a bit of controversy when it was first published, so much so that Mr. Sudhalter wrote a defense of it which was posted on the Challenge Records website when that Dutch-based record company released a two-CD companion set to the book in 2000.

Unfortunately, Mr. Sudhalter’s astute and quite brilliant writings on the subject of Jazz will no longer be forthcoming as he passed away in 2008.

The editorial staff at JazzProfiles thought it would make its own ‘contribution’ to his memory and especially to Lost Chords’  broadening edification about some of the makers of Early Jazz by offering its readers the opportunity to read the piece he wrote for the Challenge Records website.


© -Richard Sudhalter/Challenge Records, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

Talkback – And A Modest Proposal

By Richard Sudhalter
“Saxophonist-composer Bill Kirchner, a most perceptive fellow, put it perfectly: "this book is going to be a Rorschach test," he said, "but not for you. The ways in which people respond to it will tell you a lot about themselves."

How right he was. The book, of course, was LOST CHORDS, my 870-page chronicle of the contributions made by white musicians to pre-bop jazz. The nine months it's been on the market have brought a wide range of response, from thoughtful analysis to near-apoplectic vilification. Not that the latter came as any surprise. In these self-consciously compensatory times, anyone suggesting (in public, anyway) that this great music was born of anything besides the black experience is asking for trouble. Too many folks have invested too heavily in the dogma of exclusively black creationism to allow anything as awkward as mere fact to rock their neatly-rigged yachts.

Cushioning and empowering them is the current rage for moral and cultural relativism, reflexive male-bashing, historical revisionism, presentism (judging yesterday by today's notions and precepts), outcome-justified social engineering, indiscriminate demonization of white European traditions, and countless other perversions of the multiculturalist ideal.

Scholar-pedagogue Gerald Early summed it up in one review of LOST CHORDS: "It is difficult, in most scholarly circles, to write about American whites as whites these days unless one is being very critical of them." That's been the pattern lately in jazz perception here in the pre-millennial USA: the notion of white musicians as anything but brigands and exploiters, or feckless popularizers, is rigorously abjured.

LOST CHORDS has indeed brought out the telltale ink blots: it's shown some commentators to be fair-minded, intellectually upright, attempting in good faith - even when they disagreed with some of the book's assertions - to evaluate both hypothesis and execution. It's exposed others, in sometimes disheartening ways, as self-serving, self-deceiving, deeply prejudiced (in the true Latinate sense) and, above all, intellectually dishonest.

My main response to all the complaint and contumely has been to return to questions that dominated my long-ago days as a jazz reviewer for Rupert Murdoch's New York Post: what, exactly, is the responsibility of a critic? And to whom is he responsible? Everyone acknowledges the power conferred by just appearing in print (or on radio or TV); countless artists pander and flatter, court and cajole, for the sake of a feature, a two-paragraph review, even just a mention. It's an alarmingly one-sided process. Most critics (or reviewers, to accept Byron's implied distinction) enjoy a bully pulpit that's prominent, pervasive, all but unassailable. They write pretty much what they want - and that includes venting personal tastes, touting current favorites, even settling old scores. In some notorious cases they have been known to wallow in simple, mean-spirited subjectivity.


But hold: wasn't it Stanley Baldwin who declared that "power without responsibility [has been] the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages?" Surely being a critic or reviewer, especially an influential one, suggests an obligation to ask disinterested questions: "What is this artist (writer, composer, player) trying to achieve?" "Through what means?" "How skilled is he, how successful in executing his conception?" "Who is the target audience, and how effectively did the artistic product reach that audience?" "Am I being honest, informative and fair in representing what's been done here?" Significantly and justly absent from such a formulation is, "Did I, personally, like him or her?" "Do I like this (musical, literary, visual) style?" Do I, personally, find the conception or methods appealing?" "Is any of this in keeping with my own artistic (or political, or historical) beliefs and practices?"

The critical process remains skewed, one-sided, fortressed within the utter futility of any attempt to rebut a writer's pronouncements. Sure, there are letters-to-the-editor columns. But 'fess up, now: who among us can recall seeing such a letter (when it appeared at all) that didn't sound like whining, complaint, or plain olf sour grapes? It might be interesting and productive to grant performers, composers, authors a real forum of their own, allowing them to question, weigh, challenge the judgments of those who sit in judgment of them. To ask the unasked questions ~ even, where appropriate, to examine the credentials of those who occupy the bully pulpit.

Daniel Jonah Goldhagen got that opportunity in late 1996, after his HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS touched off a worldwide firestorm of soul-searching and wild accusation. It came courtesy of The New Republic, which commissioned him to write an article that appeared under the headline, "Motives, Causes and Alibis: A Reply to My Critics" (TNR, 12/23/96). In an admirably restrained, even genial manner, Goldhagen dealt with doubters, detractors, and defamers alike, taking on issues of fact and interpretation. Exhorting one and all to define and justify their arguments about what was, after all, a deeply resonant subject.

Why, I thought, isn't this kind of platform universally available? And then, as if in answer to a prayer, along came the internet. In its very immediacy, ubiquitousness, and interactive nature, it seems an ideal medium, a tool, for use in dismantling the barricades separating critic from criticized. A chat room, perhaps, compulsorily attended one day a week by the designated critic?

Of course such a prospect confers rules and responsibilities of its own: no ad hominem (or feminam) stuff. No finger-pointing or name-calling. Just cogent, necessarily substantive questions, and honest answers. By way of illustration, a letter from one reader about my recent New York Times piece on writing jazz fiction complained that "Mr. Sudhalter's message seems clear: don't try to write about jazz unless you're a jazz musician... Are jazz musicians so unique (sic) that they fall into another category, too far beyond 'civilian' experience for a writer to reach?"
It might have been rewarding to open a dialogue with this correspondent by saying, Yes, sir, that's exactly my message. I believe that music, unlike police work or politics (the two other fields cited by the letter-writer), totally defines its surroundings and practitioners. Jazz musicians are their music. Absent that, they're just people making a living, eating meals, paying bills — no different from cops or politicos. But that's just the point: the music can't be subtracted: it's the defining essence, which sets musicians apart, makes them special and ultimately a little mysterious. Makes their various complexes and misbehaviors interesting to writers, chroniclers, fans.

Would British writer Geoff Dyer, for example, have found Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, Art Pepper, and the other walking pathologies celebrated in his BUT BEAUTIFUL (Farrar, Straus, 1996) so fascinating had it not been for the music they made? Subtract the music and you have just another chronicle of aberrant thought and behavior. In a review of his book, I wondered whether Dyer would have been similarly drawn to musicians such as Henry Allen, Dizzy Gillespie, and Red Norvo, no less brilliant, who seem to have led balanced, eminently non-neurotic lives.

It all comes back, finally, to a self-evident fact: any writer, regardless how adept, who doesn't understand music will have a tough time writing convincingly about it, either as a critic or as a novelist. Such attempts invariably wind up, as Jason Epstein put it some years ago in The New Yorker, "as though someone who had never thought of holding a brush and had never considered the problems of color and volume had attempted a life of Cezanne."

Particularly relevant to the controversy surrounding LOST CHORDS is a note in which Goldhagen alludes to negative comments by Man openly hostile reporter who argued with me about my book even while admitting that he had read only a small portion of it." One of the radio interviews I’ve done since LOST CHORDS appeared was with a jazz "expert" who rather cavalierly questioned the very need for a book glorifying white musicians. Of course, he added, he hadn't read it - but "people," unidentified, had told him what it was "about" — therefore presumably qualifying him to pass judgment.

Then, too, buried on a back page of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, was a critique by New Orleans-based writer Jason Berry. Dealing mostly with the book's introduction, and dipping only fleetingly into the text, the writer squandered precious column inches on such peripheral issues as Albert Murray's 1976 book STOMPING THE BLUES, the role of the long-ago Fisk Jubilee Singers in popularizing spirituals, the character of the legendary New Orleans figure Buddy Bolden.
"Sudhalter is right to assert a role for white musicians in jazz history," Mr. Berry declared in his final paragraph. "If only he had used more light and less heat to make his case." Heat? Search as I might, I could locate none, and none of the "strained polemic" Mr. Berry claimed to find. How sweet it might have been to counter such stuff on the spot. Strained polemic? Where, Jason? How? Show me. More heat than light, in a volume that scrupulously maintains a detached, even Olympian, tone? Chapter and verse, Mr. Berry, please.

And what, too, of the British writer who decried the book's "dense, lifeless prose, dotted through with sidetracks, points of barely relevant detail, and a great deal of repetition and deviation?" Let's place the reviewer (whose own book, launched by the same publisher and editor as mine, was not without its clunky passages) in the dock, having to support his every adjective.

Like Pip, in the still unsurpassed 1948 movie version of GREAT EXPECTATIONS, parting the drapes of Miss Havisham's musty old room to let glorious light stream in, let's bring the jazz panjandrums out from behind their curtains and screens, invulnerable no longer - held to account at last for their every utterance.

LOST CHORDS has just gone into a second printing. Retrieval Records, a branch of Challenge, has issued a two-CD companion set, supplying 49 vintage cuts in illustration of music and musicians discussed in the text. Here are Bix and Tram, Bud Freeman and Adrian Rollini, Joe Venuti and Eddie Lang, Red Nichols and Miff Mole — even such relatively obscure figures as Boyce Brown and Jack Purvis, in sometimes brilliant performances.

Never mind the racial rhetoric or quasi-authoritative edicts from "authorities" who'd have trouble finding B-flat if they stumbled across it in the dark. The music speaks eloquently for itself, calling upon those who would judge it and its players to establish criteria and credentials for doing so - or forever hold their tongues.

The defense rests - for now.”


In addition to Sudhalter’s marvelous book, for those who wish to read more widely on the subject of the beginnings of Jazz, Gunther Schuller’s Early Jazz: Its Roots and Musical Development [New York: Oxford University Press, 1968] is highly recommended.

Here are three paragraphs from the Preface which will serve as an introduction to the work and as a conclusion to this feature:

“Although there is no dearth of books on jazz, very few of them have attempted to deal with the music itself in anything more than general descriptive or impressionistic terms. The majority of books have con­centrated on the legendry of jazz, and over the years a body of writing has accumulated which is little more than an amalgam of well-meaning amateur criticism and fascinated opinion. That this was allowed to pass for scholarship and serious analysis is attributable not only to the humble, socially "unacceptable" origin of jazz, but also to the widely held notion that a music improvised by self-taught, often musically il­literate musicians did not warrant genuine musicological research. Despite the fact that many "serious" composers and performers had indicated their high regard for jazz as early as the 1920$, the academic credentials of jazz were hardly sufficient to produce a serious interest in the analysis of its techniques and actual musical content. …

This history, the first of two volumes, attempts among other things to fill some of those gaps, to explore, as it were, the foothills as well as the peaks of jazz. In fact, this volume has been written on the as­sumption that virtually every record made, from the advent of jazz recordings through the early 1930$, has been listened to, analyzed, and if necessary discussed. A true assessment of an artist (or a particular musical development) cannot be made without reference to the totality of his work and its relation to his contemporaries. An analysis of Beethoven's Eroica or Armstrong's West End Blues without reference to musical history or the development of musical style could yield a certain amount of factual information, but a full evaluation would obviously be impossible without considering the authors' total oeuvre and that of their immediate predecessors, contemporaries, and succes­sors. The work of Johnny Dodds, for example, cannot be properly assessed without comparative listening to at least Sidney Bechet or Jimmy Noone. Similarly, jazz historians who write about the Original Dixieland Jazz Band without having listened to James Reese Europe or Earl Fuller recordings can hardly arrive at a reasonable evaluation of the ODJB.

Another approach employed here is to concentrate on those mo­ments, those performances, and those musicians who in one way or another represent innovational landmarks in the development of jazz. In a sense this book is an answer in terms of specific musical detail to a series of interrelated questions: What makes jazz work? What makes jazz different from other music? Why do so many people find jazz ex­citing? How did it get that way? It is as if I were sitting down with a friend not as yet initiated into the mysteries of jazz, listening to rec­ords, responding to the kind of questions a musician might ask, and sharing with him the excitement and beauty of this music. Thus the book attempts to combine the objective research of the historian-musicologist with the subjectivism of an engaged listener and per­former-composer. In this respect the book is directed particularly to the "classically" trained musician or composer, who may never have con­cerned himself with jazz and who cannot respond to the in-group jargon and glossy enthusiasm of most writing on jazz. Implicit in the perspective governing this history is the view that jazz is but one of many musical languages and cultures available to us in mid-twentieth century, and whether explicitly stating it or not, the book places jazz in that larger context.”

To be continued over the next seven years and, hopefully, beyond.

Monday, August 23, 2010

Milt Jackson 1923-1999: A Tribute

Here at JazzProfiles, we often pay homage to the pioneers of Jazz; those individuals who helped shape the music and left a legacy of recordings for the enjoyment of generations to come.


When it comes to playing Jazz on the vibraphone, no one left a bigger footprint that Milt Jackson.  Nicknamed "Bags" because of the noticeable pouches under his eyes, Milt Jackson was the preeminent player on the vibraphone during the second half of the 20th century.


The mere mention of "Bags" around others that played the instrument would bring a wry smile and a gentle shaking of the head in admiration.


Another continuing theme on JazzProfiles has been our effort to highlight the brilliance of many of today's young Jazz players.


This video tribute to Milt does both by honoring the memory of Bags while featuring some of the best talent on today's Jazz scene.


The tune is Bopag'in composed by tenor saxophonist Jimmy Heath's about whom the late Dizzy Gillespie said: "If you know Jimmy Heath's music, then you know bebop."


Bags takes the first solo beginning at 0:46, followed by alto saxophonist Jesse Davis at 2:04, tenor saxophonist Joshua Redman at 3:23, trumpeter Nicholas Payton at 4:41 and pianist Benny Green at 6:00.


Particularly noteworthy are bassist Christian McBride's stunningly strong bass line [these are easier to hear at the beginning of the solo times listed above]. Kenny Washington's drumming holds it all together while booting things along.



Friday, August 13, 2010

Ben Enwonwu, 1921 - 1994

The JazzProfiles editorial staff enjoys listening to Jazz while viewing art, photographs and graphic images.  So while it is hard-at-work preparing a feature on pianist Ahmad Jamal that will post to the blog on Tuesday, August 17th 2010, we thought you’d like to listen to and view its latest Jazz-set-to-art YouTube.

The artist whose work we’ve chosen to celebrate is the late Ben Enwonwu [1921-1994] of The Republic of Niger.  Mr. Enwonwu’s work currently graces the blog as the painting above the quotation by Grover Sales on Jazz & African Rhythm.

The music is pianist Ahmad Jamal’s version of Taboo and it is taken from the Ahmad Jamal Trio: Complete Live at the Spotlite Club 1958 [Gambit Records 69265]. It can also be found on The Complete Ahmad Jamal Trio Argo Sessions [Mosaic Records MD9-246]. Joining with Ahmad on these Spotlite Club dates are bassist Israel Crosby and drummer Vernel Fournier.

Here’s drummer Kenny Washington’s take on this track from his insert notes to the Mosaic Set:

“There are a few memorable jazz performances of Margarita Lecuona's TABOO, but this version for me is the most compelling. The first thing that strikes your ears that's different from any of the previous music is the addition of percussion in the form of a maraca. Believe it or not, as Ahmad has confirmed, Israel Crosby is playing bass and maraca at the same time. He is playing pizzicato with the index finger of his right hand. The maraca is placed between his fourth finger and pinky of the same hand. Somehow he's able to pluck the bass on beats 1 and 3 and move the maraca enough to make the beads inside the shell of the maraca sound on 2 and 4. An astonishing feat of precision and coordination. Ahmad seems to think that [violinist] Joe Kennedy Jr. came up with the concept after seeing some bass players in Latin bands doing this. Ahmad's approach to the melody is very interesting here. He gives it to us like a jigsaw puzzle, disbursing the pieces of the melody over the four-chorus length of the performance. Vernel was an expert at Latin rhythms. Here he changes it up sounding very much like a timbalero. Catch his dialogue with Ahmad during the vamp near the end of this performance.”


Tuesday, August 10, 2010

John Lewis: A Jazz Artist of “Restraint, of Control and of Economy”


“Jazz, in the hands of a neoclassicist, is a music of balance, of care, of restraint; with an unabashed lyricism and a subtle sense of formal structure, ….  [T]he neoclassicist can often be distinguished not so much by his positive virtues as by what he excludes.” [paraphrased from Ted Gioia, The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture, p. 85]

“With a touch as individual as Basie or Claude Thornhill, and an ever more careful and considered phraseology, … [John Lewis’ pianism] is swing and bebop distilled down to their most lyrical and refined essences.”
Richard Cook and Brian Morton The Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed., [p. 904].

“John Lewis’ style is single-noted and highly rhythmic. His simple, seemingly repetitive phrases are generally played just behind the beat, where much of the secret of Jazz lies. He is an emotional pianist – in a transcendental way – and he succeeds, where most pianists fail, in transmitting his emotion.”
Whitney Balliett, American Musicians: 56 Portraits in Jazz, p. 240.

© -Steven Cerra, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

The late John Lewis [1920-2001] and Oscar Peterson [1925-2007] were both Jazz pianists. But any similarity between them ends with that declarative statement.

Stylistically, they are as different as night and day.

For proof of this assertion, all one need do is listen to Oscar Peterson play his break-neck speed version of Clifford Brown’s Daahoud and then try to find anything remotely resembling it in the entire catalog of John Lewis recordings. Oscar plays more notes in one rendering of Daahoud than John plays on an entire album.

[BTW – did I mentioned that I am a big fan of OP’s Daahoud?]

This contrast in Jazz piano styles was once again brought home to me while working on a recent profile of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie when I stumbled upon the following 1946 photo of Diz’s big band at the Spotlite club with none other than John Lewis in the piano chair.

Talk about a flurry of notes – Dizzy Gillespie in his early years and in a big band, no less!

What in the world was John Lewis doing in the piano chair of such a band – a pianist who could rival Count Basie for pecking out the fewest notes in a chorus of 12-bar blues?

As the story goes, Bud Powell, whose fast and furious right-hand phrasing was a more appropriate fit for the piano chair, was AWOL again, bringing about Dizzy’s insertion of Lewis as a last-minute substitute for the gig at the Spotlite club.

For the most part, pianists are largely superfluous in a big band [you can’t hear them], so I doubt that anyone listening very closely to Diz’s band at the time would have noticed the difference.


But I did and in so doing it helped me realize that I had been wanting to spend some time developing a piece about John Lewis, an interest that was further enhanced after a recent JazzProfiles feature on Ted Gioia’s The Imperfect Art: Reflections on Jazz and Modern Culture and his analysis of Neoclassicism in Jazz as noted in the following, somewhat modified quotation [pp.84-85]:

“… the Neoclassicists of Jazz, like Neoclassicists in other arts, … attempt to pare away the excesses of previous generations to reveal an art that is pristine and timeless.

Their paradigm is the sculptor, whose work emerges from sharply cut and precisely defined lines, and whose warmth of expression is tempered by the cool, distant, and unforgiving medium with which he works.

The Neoclassicist recognizes that self-restraint is the essence of artistic style. A style which includes everything ceases to be a style – it has become an encyclopedia of techniques.

The artist who embraces all of these techniques has, by the same token, reduced himself to a mere craftsman. Art begins only when some techniques are favored, others discarded.

Jazz, for these artists, is not just the music of possibilities, but rather of constrained possibilities.”

John Lewis fits perfectly into the Neoclassic approach to Jazz.

Not surprisingly, alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, who is the primary example that Ted uses to support his premise of Neoclassicism in Jazz, always wanted to perform in concert with John Lewis and The Modern Jazz Quartet [MJQ].

His wish was granted on December 25, 1971 at Town Hall in New York City.

[As an aside and for those readers who may not be aware, John is best known as the pianist and musical director of the MJQ, one Jazz’s most enduring combos, and Paul Desmond was a member of legendary pianist Dave Brubeck’s Quartet for over 15 years]

As Irving Townsend explains in his insert notes to a posthumously issued CD that captured the music that was played that evening [paragraphing modified]:

[Following their initial meeting in San Francisco in the mid-1950s] it is not difficult to understand … the developing friendship between the two men or their admiration for each other’s music.

Each was soft-spoken, shy of lime lighted celebrity which by then had caught them in its glare.

They were contemporaries both in age and in Jazz, each a distinctive voice in what was at that time something new, a permanently established small group whose music was bound neither by the previous perimeters of Jazz nor by the calisthenics of night club entertainment.

…. There is a handful of instrumentalists whose playing redefines the instrument. Paul Desmond was one of that handful.”

Of the 1971 Christmas Day union between the MJQ and Desmond, John Lewis – appropriately -  put it more succinctly: “I guess we always thought about things the same way and finally it happened.”

Mr. Townsend assertion about Paul Desmond redefining the alto saxophone refers to the sound that he achieved on the horn; one that is sometimes called a subtone. The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz defines this as:

“A soft, caressing, breathy tone produced by carefully controlled suppression of the higher partials of a note. Subtone is produced by means of a small, slow, but steady stream of air, projected through a tight embouchure; the player must blow firmly to prevent the sound from breaking or fading altogether, but gently so that the upper partials of the note are not produced.” [p. 1168]

Obviously, the analogy between Paul and John cannot be pushed so far as to assert that Lewis changed the sound of the piano.

But at a time when most Jazz pianists were embracing bebop phrasing with it multiplicity of notes played in a fast and furious fashion, John Lewis opted for a more succinct almost laconic style.

The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz offers this description of John’s playing [paragraphing modified]:

“Lewis is among the most conservative of bop pianists. His improvised melodies, played with a delicate touch are usually simple and quiet; the accompaniments are correspondingly light, with Lewis’ left hand just grazing the keys to produce a barely audible sound.

His method of accompanying soloists is similarly understated: rather than comping – punctuating the melody with irregularly placed chords – he often plays simple counter-melodies in octaves which combine with the solo and bass parts to form a polyphonic texture.

…. Many of Lewis’ solos have a degree of motivic unity which is rare in Jazz. For example, in Bluesology [1956] each chorus of his solo builds on the previous one by establishing a link from the end of one chorus to the beginning of the next.

As … [his] solo progresses, Lewis subjects its opening motif to inversion, chromatic alterations, and a variety of other alterations in pitch and shape, which nevertheless retain their links with the basic figure [i.e.: motif].[p. 695]

Given all of this, maybe John does change the sound of the piano after all?!

More insights into what makes John Lewis’ kind of Jazz so singular and satisfying are to be found in the following inserts notes to his album Kansas City Breaks [Red Barron JK57759], which Dan Morgensten, the distinguished Jazz critic and current Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University, has graciously granted copyright permission to replicate.

John’s choice for the instrumentation on this recording assures it of an almost chamber music quality as he is joined by Joe Kennedy, Jr. on violin, Frank Wess on flute, Howard Collins on guitar, and John, Marc Johnson and Shelly Manne on piano, ass and drums, respectively.

In order to give JazzProfiles readers the opportunity to sample John’s music from Kansas City Breaks, the editorial staff has selected this group’s performance of Django, probably John’s most famous composition, as the audio track and set it to this YouTube tribute to John Lewis.


© -Dan Morgenstern. Reprinted with permission; copyright protected, all rights reserved.

“Throughout his long and distinguished career, John Lewis has created so much remarkable and beautiful music that it seems presumptuous to speak of landmarks. Nevertheless, I'll go out on a limb and call this remarkably beautiful album a John Lewis landmark.

It brings to first fruition some ideas about a new and fresh combination of instruments that have been taking shape over a number of years, starting not long after the breakup (after a record near quarter-century) of the Modern Jazz Quartet. (That the MJQ would eventually be reconstituted from time to time was inevitable, but it clearly no longer occupies a central position in Lewis's musical life.)

Soon after Lewis began to teach at New York's City College, he formed a student group with the unusual instrumentation heard here, and in 1975, he made an album for Columbia, "P.O.V." on which a similar combination (substituting cello for guitar) was presented. But one need only compare the 1975 version of Lyonhead with the 1982 one to realize that a lot has happened since then.

Much closer to the new conception was the music, recorded in the spring of 1981, heard on "The John Lewis Album for Nancy Harrow" (Finesse FW 37681), which essentially introduced the John Lewis Group—the only differences being that Connie Kay was on drums, and that the ensemble's primary function was to provide a lovely framework for Nancy Harrow.

It was the artistic success of this venture that sparked the album at hand, and it is a pleasure to announce that the John Lewis Group will not confine its existence to the recording studios, but will perform live as well — and often, one hopes. The Group is already so well integrated and fine tuned and has achieved such a high level of empathy that it must take its place in the front ranks of jazz ensembles.

That should come as no surprise to anyone familiar with the work of John Lewis, which from the start has been synonymous with a very special kind of excellence in which creativity and craftsmanship—both of the highest order—combine with inspiration and elegance. In the world of jazz, the term composer is often misused and misunderstood. Suffice it to say that John Lewis is a composer in the truest sense and a true jazz composer. And a great player as well; a true improviser.

There is no conflict in Lewis between these roles. Rather, they complement each other and co-exist in perfect balance. Form and order serve as springboards for adventure, surprise and that sense of playfulness (the sense in which the great Dutch historian Johan Huizinga uses it: "Play casts a spell over us... it is invested with the noblest qualities we are capable of perceiv­ing in things: rhythm and harmony") without which there can be no true jazz... or real music.

The John Lewis Group at play is a joy to the ear and the heart. There is no striving for effects, no pretense; just pure music-making invested with unity of purpose. This is indeed a group-a unit—in which distinctive musical personalities come together without clashes of egos. For John Lewis is not only a great composer and instrumentalist, he is also a great leader.

He has chosen well. There are some established players here, to say the least. It is unlikely that any reader of these notes will need an introduction to Shelly Manne, one of the most accomplished and versatile percussionists in jazz, but it is worth noting that this, to the best of my knowledge, is his first recorded collaboration with Lewis. A case of instant rapport. Frank Wess, too, is justly famous as the man who, more than any other, established the flute in jazz. That he is also a more than accomplished composer-arranger surely does him no harm in this context (which, incidentally, is the most stimulating in which he has been heard of late).

Joe Kennedy, Jr. has, finally, become somewhat better known. Fine jazz violinists have always been scarce, and the instrument is not as fully appreciated in jazz circles as it deserves to be. Kennedy made his first records in 1945, worked and recorded with (and wrote for) Ahmad Jamal in the '50s (also making an album of his own that was a well-kept secret), and then settled in Rich­mond, Virginia where he is Supervisor of Music for the public school system and concert master of the local symphony. He also happens to be Benny Carter's cousin, and the great man recently coaxed him out into the jazz world again, taking him on tours to Japan and Europe and major U.S. festivals. Last year Kennedy was featured on a Billy Taylor album (the pianist, who worked for Eddie South and Stuff Smith, knows a good violinist when he hears one), and then on the aforementioned Nancy Harrow LP. I've been a fan of Joe's for many years, and think he's never been heard in a better setting than here.

Marc Johnson, the youngster of the group, was in Bill Evans's last trio—not a job for a beginner—and then with Stan Getz. He has also worked in a duo setting with John Lewis, who called him "one of the best I've ever played with'.' His work here bears out that judgment. We've come to take remarkable bassists for granted, but Marc Johnson will surprise you.

Howard Collins is one of the last of that rare and selfless breed, the willing rhythm guitarist. He performs this demanding but unsung task wonderfully well, but that's not all he can do, or is asked to do here. Howie's been around for a while, but not lately in such good company. 

The program here is a varied one, demonstrating the scope and range of John Lewis's composing and arranging gifts, and, not incidentally, the durability of his best pieces. Work of four decades is represented, but D&E, vintage 1951, sounds as fresh as the brand-new Kansas City Breaks. Perhaps that is because the eternal verities, not least among them melodic strength and grace, have always been foremost in Lewis's writing, but surely it is also because he has always been able, to a remarkable degree, to find fresh new ways to present his classics. (That's not the only thing John Lewis and Duke Ellington have in common; another might be a love for and profound understanding of the blues—form and content. There's a lot of blues here, in a lot of guises.)

Django is a case in point. Quite possibly the most famous Lewis piece, it was in the MJQ's repertoire for more than 20 years but never grew stale. It has been re-interpreted here with such imagination and freshness that it sounds delightfully new. It also serves to introduce some of the many textures, colors and nuances the group has at its disposal, for one instance, the combination of bowed bass, low violin and bottom flute that backs Lewis's stately recapitulation of the theme.

Sacha's March begins with Manne's distant parade drums, then the band comes into view. Shelly's extensive solo work reminds me of Zutty Singleton—it has that spirit. There are fine solos by Wess, still the flute master, and Kennedy, who enters a la Stuff Smith and swings as hard as that paragon of jazz fiddle. But the main event is the wonderful interplay.

Lyonhead, dedicated to Jimmy Lyons of Monterey fame, stems from the score to a documentary film, "Cities for People'.' The almost pointillist sections that frame the solos (by Lewis, spare, skipping and with a crystal sound; Kennedy, and Wess, the latter with brilliant Manne support) are out-of-tempo and through-composed, making for fine contrast with the lively, swinging improvisations.

Winter Tale, from the score for the 1962 film "A Milanese Story,' is a moody piece with a lovely melody, introduced by Kennedy with a gypsy feeling and exposed by Lewis and Wess. When Kennedy resumes in the lead, Wess dances around him. Eddie South would have loved Kennedy's closed statement.

Valeria, from the same film score, has a latinesque beat and feeling. Everybody is in splen­did form, and the rhythm section's work is outstanding. Manne builds a brushfire under Lewis, who gets into a characteristic double-time groove, and Johnson's lively bass lines are a joy. A unique touch is the flute-and-piano unison stuff behind the violin in the closing ensemble passages.

D and E is a sunny blues, beautifully scored — all the voices interwoven in what is essentially a feature for Marc Johnson, who, among other things, plays a terrific cadenza. There are witty solos by piano, violin and flute, and Collins's steady strum is in evidence.

Kansas City Breaks continues the happy mood and also has a prominent role for the bass, notably in an extended dialog, first with Wess, then with Lewis (whose ideas are charming here), punctuated by Shelly's triangle. Again, the voicings are lovely, including some three-way pizzicato activity. A masterpiece that affirms the living roots of jazz.

Milano, a pretty waltz composed in 1954, finds the piano in the spotlight, exposing the melody with serene dignity. Lewis the master accompanist is also in evidence, behind Wess's improvisa­tion on the theme. The flute and violin unison figures are yet another indication of the group's varied palette. A perfect closing to a splendid set.

The John Lewis Group is a bright new presence on the jazz scene. The high standards it has set for itself here are what one would expect from John Lewis, but nothing else about this music is predictable. It is very good to know that such music can still be made, for it proves that tradi­tion and innovation are not opposing forces. The message is clear and strong. Listen!

Dan Morgenstern, Director, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers Univ. (1982)”

And no one writes more descriptively about music with words than the Dean of Jazz writers, Whitney Balliett who provided the insert notes to John Lewis’ Grand Encounter Pacific Jazz album [1217;Toshiba EMI CD – TOCJ-6115]. These follow Dan’s notes.

© -Whitney Balliett, copyright protected; all rights reserved.

“Nostalgia is cheap witchcraft. It is also an old looking glass, which reflects, however dimly, chairs that are chairs and light that is light. Thus, in jazz, where nostalgia often passes as critical judgment, there is frequently moist talk of Chick Webb and the Savoy Ballroom, of Bix Beiderbecke hammering out gorgeous metals in person that he never recorded, of Buddy Bolden stifl­ing the waters of Lake Ponchartrain. But these things are at least half true, and probably more. In the same fashion, it is more than half true that the area of jazz now most nostalgia-fixed - the years, roughly, between 1935-1945 - has proved re­markably durable.

In this period one hears, to be sure, chuffy rhythm sections, paralytic tempos, a sometimes thin and purposeless suavity, and instrumentalists who were more expert embellishers than improvisers. One also hears, though, an undated sweetness and inter­dependent relaxation and unhurry — where soloists were means and not ends — that produced in Billie Holiday's singing, Harry Edison's bellying trumpet, or Sid Catlett's majestic drumming, a kind of jazz that elevated artlessness to art. Much of the free lyricism that resulted has, for the present at any rate, gone out of jazz, which is, inevitably, busy with techniques. It can still be found, however, in the work of Coleman Hawkins, Roy Eldridge, Jo Jones, Ruby Braff, Teddy Wilson, and Count Basie, as well as among modernists like Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Hank Jones, Joe Wilder, Joe Morello, and the Modern Jazz Quartet. (It can also be heard everywhere on this record,- which though modern in its overtones, is full of the old poetry; as a result, the record wears like Harris tweed, and is, perhaps, one of the great jazz records, which is not a liner-note puff but a subjective truth.)

Much of the musical success of the Modern Jazz Quartet, which is the most plausibly inventive group to appear since the Davis-Mulligan 1949 Capitol band, must be credited to John Lewis, its pianist and "musical director." For Lewis, a gentle, shy, bearded man in his mid-thirties, is an exceptional jazz com­poser. He is also a unique and invariably moving jazz pianist, a fact that few people have bothered with. Lewis' style is much like that of the late, underappreciated Clyde Hart. Basically, it is a single-note attack, supplemented by light chording or occa­sional melodic counter-figures in the left hand. His touch is sure and delicate, his ideas are disarmingly simple and honest. He has a rhythmic sense and enough technique to allow him easy freedom. One rarely hears an arpeggio — unless it is used func­tionally — or much block chording. Also, there is none of the metallic sweat so fashionable in the work of pianists like Hamp­ton Hawes and Horace Silver. Lewis, indeed, has a kind of dogged, floating quality in his playing; he seems to slide beneath, above, and around his materials - like, in a sense, the best of the New Orleans clarinetists-brightening them, deepening them with emotion, filling the chinks. In addition to being what amounts to a classical jazz soloist, Lewis is one of the few great supporting jazz pianists. (Lewis would never sanction the first statement; before he made this record, he had consistently refused to make a solo piano recording, feeling that jazz should be, as it is in the work of the MJQ, a collective expression.) Lewis, as a supportive pianist, again resembles Clyde Hart. (Listen to Hart behind Lionel Hampton's vocal on the latter's Victor record of "Confessin' " or his fill-ins around Lips Page's singing on the Savoy version of "Uncle Sam Blues." Then listen here to Lewis as he moves in beneath Jim Hall on the first bridge of "Skylark", and behind Bill Perkins in the first chorus of "Almost Like Being in Love.") Where most pianists simply supply cold, boring back­ground chords, Lewis like Jess Stacy, Hank Jones, or Billy Kyle, either plays an enfiring subordinate second line or chords that amplify or embroider purposely what is going on in front.

This record was made in one afternoon a few months ago in a small, empty theatre in Los Angeles. Largely an accident, it is composed of men — outside of the two teams of Lewis-Heath (the MJQ) and Hamilton-Hall (Hamilton's Quintet) -who or­dinarily do not work together or have not played together at all. As such, it is: like Armstrong's 'Knockin' a Jug", a "motherless" session. Some of the great jazz records have been motherless sessions: many of Lionel Hampton's pick-up sides made in the late Thirties on Victor; Red Norvo's Comet session in 1945 with Parker, Gillespie, Phillips, Teddy Wilson, and Slam Stewart; the Teddv Wilson-Harry James-John Simmons-Red Norvo "Just a Mood." The head arrangements were done on the spot by Lewis, who acted as musical overseer for the date, and also contributed the blues-original, "Two Degrees East — Three Degrees West", a charming, infectious figure that should be expanded into a work for the MJQ. Elsewhere, Lewis's touch is evident in the quiet tempos, the unstrained swinging, the overall, persuasive warmth.

Bill Perkins, who acts as a kind of co-leader here, was born in 1924 in San Francisco. He holds a B.A. from the University of California, Santa Barbara, and a degree in Electrical Engineer­ing from Cal. Tech. Although he has played with both Woody Herman and Stan Kenton, he has not been a full time profes­sional jazz musician much over five years. His style, at present, is an intelligent offshoot of the sunny drybones school of Lester Young and Stan Getz. It is a flowing, melodic approach that em­ploys few notes, a sense of languor, and a big, gentle tone. There is none of the hair-pulling, the bad tone, or the ugliness that is now a growing mode, largely in New York, among the work of the hard-bopsters like Sonny Rollins, Hank Mobely, and J. R. Montrose. His solos here on the blues, on "Easy Living", and "Love Me or Leave Me", are excellent lyrical tenor saxophone, and represent his best recorded work to date.

Jim Hall was born in New York and is twenty-five. He, too, has been a professional for only a few years. His style is remark­ably similar to that of Charlie Christian, especially in the direct way he strikes his notes, and in his practice of repeating certain single notes and simple figures. Some of the best modern guitar­ists have a tendency toward slipperiness and laciness. Hall, how­ever, gives each note weight, with such intent that his work occa­sionally has a kind of puggish, lumbering quality about it, which is not at all unpleasant.

Percy Heath, in comparison with Hall, is a veteran of thirty-three and is one of the soundest rhythm bassists in jazz, as well as a pleasing, unobtrusive soloist. (Some of the newer jazz bas­sists would make a full orchestra out of their instrument.)

Chico Hamilton, at thirty-five, is, with Shelly Manne and Joe Morello one of the few younger drummers who have absorbed the lessons of sprung drumming, as taught by Max Roach and Kenny Clarke, but at the same time have retained the purpose of the drummer as a sensitive, sympathetic supporter.

Most of the music here is self-explanatory. Of particular in­terest, however, are these items: the simple ingenuity of the first four choruses of "Two Degrees East — Three Degrees West," in which Perkins and Hall play a unison figure with spaced bass and tom-tom beats below them, are joined midway in the second chorus by Lewis, then drift into the background for the follow­ing two choruses while Heath solos; Lewis's appealing, yet al­most static, rendition of "I Can't Get Started"; the marvelously oblique, lazy-seeming piano introductions on "Love Me Or Leave Me" and "Almost Like Being in Love", which also has some dis­creet yet forceful solo brush work by Hamilton, mostly in ex­changes with Hall and Perkins; the way, in Perkins's third chorus in "Almost", Lewis picks up Perkins's last few bars before the bridge and repeats them throughout the bridge behind Perkins; all of "Love Me Or Leave Me", which is an almost perfect jazz recording.

None of the tempos here is above a fast walk. The loudest sound is Perkins's restrained tenor. The materials are traditional, the approach even a little old-fashioned. This is not, however, pursed chamber jazz, where the music blows lilies. Rather, it is full of the sort of understated power and inspiration that ran through so much of jazz ten or fifteen years ago, which is a blessed event.”

We thought it might be fitting to close this piece on John Lewis with the following YouTube which uses the arrangement of Django that appears on The Modern Jazz Society Presents a Concert of Contemporary Music [MG N -1040; Verve 314 559 827-2]. Richard Cook and Brian Morton awarded it a “Crown” designation as an recording deserving of special merit and offered this review in their Penguin Guide to Jazz on CD, 6th Ed.:

“One of the great forgotten masterpieces of the 1950s, this brilliant date is still available only as a limited-edition reissue in Verve Connoisseur Edition. Collectors are advised to snap up any copies they see, although it’s disgraceful that this classic should not be more easily available. The Modern Jazz Society was an initiative by Lewis and [Gunther] Schuller to present new works and new arrangements, broadly in the “Third Stream” vein which Schuller encouraged. Lewis was only the supervisor of the original LP, but new discoveries -  … - find him at the piano.

The five principal pieces are all Lewis compositions, and they are among the finest treatments of “Little David’s Fugue,” “Django,” and “The Queen’s Fancy,” ever set down.” Django, with its final coda taken at the stately pace of a cortege, is so bewitching that it can silence a room.” [p. 903]