BOOKS / Ron Jacobs : Marc Myers Tells Us 'Why Jazz Happened'

'Jazz, man, that’s where I’m at':
Chronicling the history of America's music

Myers provides the reader with a deep, rich, and broad perspective on the confluence of jazz and U.S. history in the decades following World War Two.

By Ron Jacobs / The Rag Blog / November 18, 2013

[Why Jazz Happened by Marc Myers (2012: University of California Press); Hardcover; 266 pp; $30.51.]

After a very brief introduction, Walt Myers begins his history of jazz music with the bebop era. Charlie Parker’s saxophone floats in the background as he sets the background for a unique look at the economic, cultural, and even political circumstances of the last 70 or so years of jazz in the United States.

Truman Capote once called the writing of Jack Kerouac “typing, not writing.” A similar mindset met the advent of bebop in the 1940s. This snobbery came from a misunderstanding of the improvisation Beat writing and bebop insisted on. Within a decade, however, bebop had replaced the Big Band swing sound as the dominant force in the music.

Why Jazz Happened details this transformation. There are a multitude of details between the covers of this book. These details require a quality writer to arrange them and make a readable story. Myers performs that task nobly. In doing so, he provides the reader with a deep, rich, and broad perspective on the confluence of jazz and U.S. history in the decades following World War Two.

It may be difficult for anyone who first began listening to music on the radio in the 1960s to believe that jazz was at one time a popular and bestselling musical form. Indeed, concerts by swing band masters like Benny Goodman and shows by masters of the solo instrument like Charlie Parker were the mid-twentieth century equivalent to today’s hip-hop and rock artists. When the phonograph became affordable and the vinyl record common, the popularity of the form grew even greater.

Myers relates the intriguing story of the relationships between jazz artists, producers, electronics corporations, and the recording trade. He tosses into that mix the struggles of composers and performers in gaining compensation for their works and the growth of the musicians’ union. In his telling, the reader gains an understanding of the nature of art in an economy rapidly becoming corporatized, with the accompanying contradiction of simultaneous compartmentalization and centralization monopoly capitalism demands.

Advances in technology did more than enhance accessibility to the music and increase sales. It also changed the music itself. Instead of short solos made for a three minute song -- a virtual necessity on the shellac 78 RPM discs in existence at the beginning of reproducible music -- the advent of the 33⅓ RPM LP enabled producers to lay down extended solos.

Given the nature of bebop, which is defined by long solos by individual band members, the LP provided thousands more jazz listeners with an opportunity to hear their favorite ensembles and soloists. This popularized the music yet also removed its avant-garde allure. Now, anyone with a record player had the potential to be hip.

The downside to the development of vinyl records for jazz music and musicians, especially the shorter playing 45 RPM variety, was that record companies began to record other genres of music that were less established in the industry. This was done in part because many of these artists were less aware of the economic possibilities of the format and therefore easier to exploit.

Indeed, one could reasonably argue that it was the 45 RPM record that popularized both rhythm and blues and rock and roll. Both genres depended on a catchy hook and the songs usually ran less than three minutes each. As anyone who grew up listening to 45s knows, this format was perfect for those little round pieces of plastic with big holes in the middle.

In today’s world of Mp3s, downloading, ITunes, and Bittorrent, the pages Myers devotes to discussing artists’ attempts to gain control over the rights to their work takes on added interest. The story of musicians fighting to make money from other artists performing their works is a long one. It is also one that seems to contain more victories for the corporations that control music publishing and recording than victories for the artists.

The creation of the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1914 was the beginning of an organized attempt to distribute the royalties from such performances. Its enhancement in the 1930s and 1940s created a stalemate between the industry and the Musicians Union that was resolved when one record company acceded to the union’s demands, thereby forcing the other corporations involved to do the same or rsik losing their stable of artists to another company.

The incorporation of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in 1952 added another layer of accountability to the process, albeit one that took a slightly more industry-favorable position than either ASCAP or the union.

Never lost in the story’s telling by Myers are the changes in the music. He chronicles the history of postwar jazz from its bebop and swing roots to the smooth sounds of West Coast jazz to hard bop and into the fusion sounds of the late 1960s and 1970s. In between, he tells the story of avant-garde jazz and its modern music influences from returning GI musicians studying atonal composition and modern classical in university music departments on the GI Bill.

He also discusses the changes wrought by rock music’s British invasion and Berry Gordy’s softer R&B that became known as soul music. The cultural revolution of the 1960s, whether it was the fury and fight for justice boiling up in Black America or the psychedelic brew being mixed in the counterculture of America’s youth, influenced the direction jazz would take, as well.

Myers touches on them all to create a detailed, well-researched and readable history of the essential musical form of the United States.

Why Jazz Happened is a book for anyone interested in jazz music. This history penned by Marc Myers places jazz within the cultural, technological, and economic currents of the period covered. The writing is fluid and accessible. Myers provides a complex story of a cultural phenomenon where the context is more than incidental.

Not only will readers understand jazz music on a deeper level after reading this book, they will also better understand the history of the United States after World War Two.

[Rag Blog contributor Ron Jacobs is the author of The Way The Wind Blew: A History of the Weather Underground. He recently released a collection of essays and musings titled Tripping Through the American Night. His novel, The Co-Conspirator's Tale, was published in 2013, along with the third novel in the series All the Sinners Saints. Ron Jacobs can be reached at ronj1955@gmail.com. Find more articles by Ron Jacobs on The Rag Blog.]

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Terry Townsend : John Coltrane and the Jazz Revolution

Trane photo used on jacket of The John Coltrane Quartet: Visit to Scandanavia. Image from Seattle Blogs.
'A force which is truly for good':
John Coltrane and the jazz revolution

By Terry Townsend / October 7, 2010

"You can play a shoestring if you're sincere." -- John Coltrane

John William Coltrane (abbreviated as "Trane" by his fans) was born on September 23, 1926. Since his untimely death on July 17, 1967, saxophone colossus Coltrane has become an icon of African-American pride, achievement, and uncompromising determination. He led a revolution in music that mirrored the turbulent growth of black militancy and revolutionary ideas within the urban black community. Today, Trane continues to inspire.

Coltrane has often been likened to Malcolm X. U.S. jazz writer and socialist Frank Kofsky, in his classic 1970 book Black Nationalism and the Revolution in Music (Pathfinder Press, New York), wrote:

Both men perceived the reality about [the USA] -- a reality you could only know if you were Black and had worked your way up and through the tangled jungle of jazz clubs, narcotics, alcohol, mobsters...

Both men called upon their followers to break out of accustomed ways of thinking and feeling, and they themselves were willing to lead the way by challenging all the conventional assumptions and discarding those that failed to meet the rigorous test of reality -- even if, in doing so, they were forced to sacrifice their own material security.

Both men could have assured themselves of lives of relative comfort and wellbeing merely by making a few seemingly minor compromises; yet both refused to exchange a mess of consumer-goods pottage for the right to seek after and enunciate the truth as best they could.

John Coltrane in 1960 at the home of the late San Francisco Chronicle jazz critic Ralph Gleason. Photo by Jim Marshall.
It is no accident that references to Coltrane appeared in the films of Spike Lee -- most prominently in Mo' Better Blues but also in Malcolm X. That film features the haunting composition "Alabama'' -- written by Coltrane after reading a speech by Martin Luther King eulogizing four black children blown up in a racist attack on a church in 1963.

African-American culture often reflects the political and ideological moods and aspirations of the community from which it springs. It sometimes anticipates them. Coltrane's music evolved during a political upsurge of the African-American people.

Through the late 1950s and into the '60s, the momentum of the civil rights movement gathered pace. In the cities, the militant ideas of black nationalism and black power were embraced by larger and larger numbers of African Americans. Black youth were fired up by the struggles of their compatriots in the South and the liberation movements in Africa and the Third World.

A significant number discovered the works of Lenin, Mao, Castro, Nkrumah, Fanon, and Ho Chi Minh. This powerful movement for freedom combined with, and inspired, the huge anti-Vietnam War movement and women's liberation movement to spark a massive youth radicalization that shook U.S. society.

There was also a vigorous cultural radicalization. Many African Americans explored art, music, culture, and religious and philosophical ideas from Africa and Asia that they felt were more in tune with their aspirations and desires. Others set about rediscovering their African heritage and history. It was a period of turbulence, impatience, excitement, frustration, and determination to create a better society.

John Coltrane provided the jazz soundtrack of the '60s. Anybody who has attempted to come to terms with Coltrane's music is immediately struck by its brooding impatience, absence of compromise, and sense of a tenacious quest for an undefined goal.

Coltrane's musical quest began in earnest when he joined Miles Davis in 1955, played for a period with Thelonious Monk in 1957, and rejoined Miles in 1959. In this period, it was clear Coltrane was champing at the bit to break free of the constraints of the now accepted conventions of the previously avant-guard form of jazz, be bop (which itself had developed in the early 1940s among mostly African American musicians as a rebellion against the commercial homogenization of big band "swing" jazz).

His celebrated "sheets of sound'' were first heard as his sax solos raced faster and faster, cramming notes into each other to create harmonies of fascinating complexity. His surging solos built around recurring motifs are prominent on Mile Davis' forever fabulous Kind Of Blue. His recording debut as leader in 1959 with Giant Steps, soon followed by My Favorite Things, found him beginning to explore improvisational freedom.

John Coltrane quartet. Photo by Herb Snitzer / jazz.com
By 1961, the classic Coltrane quartet was in place -- McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on bass. With this band Trane created some of his greatest work. From 1961 to 1965, they explored new terrain in improvisation as they attempted to extend beyond the limits of bop. They investigated adventurous new polyrhythms and tempos borrowed from African, Arab, and Indian music.

Taking up soprano saxophone allowed Trane to focus on "Eastern'' tonalities. He studied sitar and began writing to the great Indian sitarist Ravi Shankar. He experimented with drone instruments and chants. He investigated the use of unusual combinations of instruments to replicate the sound and texture of African and Indian music.

Yet as he experimented, he continued pushing and accentuating his characteristic dense, surging, complex sax lines. Albums such as Coltrane, John Coltrane Quartet Plays and A Love Supreme are great examples of this period.

By 1966, Coltrane's ceaseless search for musical "progress'' led to the demise of his classic quartet with the departure of Jones and Tyner. As far as they had traveled with Trane, they were not prepared to follow their leader further into the uncharted waters he was now exploring.

Respected Australian jazz critic Gail Brennan aptly described the music that followed the quartet's disintegration, until Coltrane's premature death from liver cancer at the age of 40, in OK Music magazine: "Some, but not all of the music of Coltrane's last period pushes emotion, energy, sheer momentum and rhythmic, textural and harmonic complexity to the point where it seems that it can only seize up or explode'."

Archie Schepp. Image from 123Nonstop.
Coltrane had been increasingly drawn towards the emerging generation of radical young black musicians who were abandoning the accepted rules of be bop and hard bop jazz to play "free jazz'." Coltrane was soon seen as the leader of this iconoclastic movement, the first among equals of players like Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Pharaoh Sanders, Archie Shepp, Eric Dolphy, and Cecil Taylor. Sanders, Shepp, and Dolphy played with Coltrane's band prior to Jones' and Tyner's departure.

Coltrane never explicitly embraced black political black militancy or radical politics but was uncompromisingly in the vanguard of the cultural and spiritual radicalization that was political black nationalism's constant companion. He buried himself in books on Indian, Asian, and African philosophies and African history -- topics which recur regularly in the titles of his songs. His music was a source of black pride and consciousness.

Yet Coltrane was not opposed to radical politics nor was he apolitical. Many of his later musical collaborators were convinced radicals. Free jazz was considered to be the musical equivalent of the radical black politics. Archie Shepp said in 1968: "We are only an extension of that entire civil rights-Black Muslim-black nationalist movement that is taking place in America. That is fundamental to the music.'' His saxophone, Shepp added, was "like a machine gun in the hands of the Viet Cong."

It was not unusual for Coltrane's performances to attract political crowds. According to one patron at New York's Half Note club, young blacks would shout "Freedom Now!'' as Trane's long solos reached their climax.

Coltrane was an admirer of Malcolm X. He agreed to play benefit concerts for civil rights organizations, and many compositions were dedicated to Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement. He opposed the Vietnam War.

Trane in Chicago, 1965. Photo by Ted Williams.
In 1966, Coltrane told Frank Kofsky:

Music is an expression of higher ideals... brotherhood is there; and I believe with brotherhood, there would be no poverty... there would be no war... I know that there are bad forces, forces put here that bring suffering to others and misery to the world, but I want to be a force which is truly for good.

John Coltrane was responsible for some of the most beautiful, controversial, and challenging music ever created, as is well illustrated by two brilliant albums. Bye Bye Blackbird is a live concert recording made in Europe in mid-1962 consisting of two fantastic, surging 20-minute work-outs. First Meditations was recorded in late 1965 in the twilight of Coltrane's classic quartet. While it precedes much of his most extreme work, its mystical, turbulent power is hypnotic.

If you have not listened to John Coltrane, these albums are as good a place to start as any. But be warned: experiencing the magic and tumult of Coltrane's later music is not for the faint-hearted, but it is a challenge well worth meeting.


The militant and the mystic

John Coltrane's music evolved as black America moved from the optimism sparked by the political and social gains of the mass civil rights movement in the late 1950s and early 1960s, through the mid-'60s explosion in black pride and militancy, to the late '60s era of "black power'."

From the mid-'60s, the optimism began to falter. The promise of equality evaporated as the cities and ghettos became increasingly run-down and the reality that the U.S. system was racist to the core became obvious. The militant ideas of "black nationalism," black power, and socialism were embraced by large numbers of African-Americans as they sought solutions outside the system.

Coltrane's music was the jazz soundtrack of black radicalization. Coltrane's classic quartet -- with McCoy Tyner on piano, Elvin Jones on drums, and Jimmy Garrison on bass -- from 1961 to 1965 was in the vanguard.

But by 1966, Jones and Tyner were not prepared to follow their leader further into uncharted waters. Coltrane increasingly was drawn towards a younger generation of radical young black musicians who were abandoning the accepted rules of jazz to play avant-garde or "free jazz'."

Pharoah Sanders. Photo from Axiom Images.
Archie Shepp and Pharoah Sanders soon became Coltrane's most regular and important collaborators -- at live gigs and on records -- until his untimely death in 1967. As these brilliant '60s reissues prove, they were capable of startling work in their own right.

Between them, Shepp and Sanders personified the two allied streams of black radicalism in jazz in the late '60s -- the political and the spiritual. As U.S. socialist Frank Kofsky pointed out in 1970, both trends reflected the black ghettos' "vote of `no confidence' in Western civilisation and the American Dream'."

Politically, black youth were fired up by the civil rights struggles in the Southern states, the liberation movements in Africa and Asia, and the struggle to end the Vietnam War. The ideas of Marx, Lenin, Mao, Castro, Ho Chi Minh, Kwame Nkrumah, Franz Fanon, and especially Malcolm X were popular. Revolution was openly espoused.

There was also a vigorous cultural radicalization. African Americans explored art, music, and religious and philosophical ideas from Africa and Asia. They set about rediscovering African history. It was a period of turbulence, impatience, excitement, frustration, and determination to create a better society.

Shepp embraced political black nationalism and Marxism while Sanders, like Coltrane, was uncompromisingly in the vanguard of the cultural and spiritual radicalization.

Fire Music, released in 1965, was Shepp's second Impulse album. Every track radiates warmth and determination. It has a horn-laden big band feel without any of the staidness that tag implies. While challenging many preconceived notions of jazz, it is thoroughly accessible. Shepp's tenor sax exudes a rich, hoarse tone that can move from "down and dirty'," to plaintive, to insistent in a single tune.

The album conforms to Shepp's 1968 statement that free-jazz musicians were "an extension of that entire civil rights-Black Muslim-black nationalist movement."

John Coltrane in 1960. Photo by Francis Wolff.
Fire Music opens with "Hambone'," a tribute to African-American folk music -- gospel and blues, and a touch of r&b. The simple melodies contrast with soaring solos and complex rhythms. The album also closes with a mind-boggling live version. "Los Olvidados (the forgotten ones)'' is about the frustration Shepp felt when employed as a counselor with a government-funded program aimed at reducing "juvenile delinquency'' in New York. The program was under-resourced and was simply a band-aid which, said Shepp, allowed the wealthy and powerful to "assuage their own guilt about the forgotten ones'."

"Malcolm, Malcolm, Semper Malcolm'' is a moving, moody eulogy to the radical black leader Malcolm X, who was assassinated that same year. Shepp, with sax and poem, conveys respect, love and anger while David Izenzon's beautiful bowed bass "sings'' along. It was first composed as part of "The Funeral'," a longer composition dedicated to murdered Southern U.S. civil rights leader Medgar Evers.

"I call it 'Malcolm forever' because [although Malcolm] was killed, the significance of what he was will grow. He was the first cat to give actual expression to much of the hostility most American Negroes feel. A further significance of Malcolm was that toward the end of his life, he was evolving into a sound political realist'," Shepp explained.

Pharoah Sanders' radical egalitarian cosmic mysticism, which also characterized Coltrane's last years, is central to Tauhid (1967) and Karma (1969). Sanders seems to begin where Coltrane left off. Like many other African Americans, he sought to go beyond the hypocrisy of mainstream white Christianity and philosophy to find a creed that was inclusive, non-discriminatory, and tolerant. Finding none, he invented his own.

Karma best illustrates Sanders' utopian outlook. "The Creator Has a Master Plan'," a majestic 32-minute opus not unlike Coltrane's seminal "A Love Supreme," is both deeply melodic and "caconophonic'."

Sanders lures the unsuspecting listener with a beautifully conventional introduction which gently leads to his trademark wild and wonderful screams, squalls, squeaks, and growls, all the time softened by the soothing background pulse of bells, shaker, and percussion. Sanders' world view is summed up by the chant that pervades "Creator'': "Peace and happiness for every man, through all the land."

Tauhid concentrates on the historical and spiritual heritage of African Americans. "Upper and Lower Egypt'' is the product of Sanders' long research into the history and religions of Egypt. Using the unusual-in-jazz piccolo, Sanders glides through the Lower Nile, moving deeper into Africa. Once in the upper reaches, the mood changes with energetic, chant-like cadences that make the hairs rise on the back of your neck.

Archie Shepp's political radicalism led to a falling out with Impulse, and he found it extremely difficult to persuade other U.S. record companies to record him. Instead, Shepp taught music at the University of Massachusetts after 1978. Sanders, his radicalism being far less threatening, continued to record and perform. Neither compromised.

What makes these artists great -- as all the albums mentioned above reveal -- is not simply their immense musical ability, but the fact that they drip with passion, honesty and commitment. Check them out.

Source / International Journal of Socialist Renewal.

The John Coltrane Quartet (John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, Elvin Jones) on the 1963 TV program, Jazz Casual, playing "Alabama," written by Coltrane after reading a speech by Martin Luther King eulogizing four black children blown up in a racist attack on a church in 1963.

Thanks to Carl Davidson / CCDS / The Rag Blog

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Willie Mitchell and Mary Daly : Partners in Demise

Above, Willie Mitchell with his axe and, below, Mary Daly with hers (a labrys, a traditional symbol of the Goddess).
Intertwined obit:
Soul man and radical feminist leave the stage

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / January 17, 2010

Life has a strange way of intertwining existences in ways that defy human reason. Like puns or anagrams that seem to reveal hidden meanings, passings away are also open to interpretation. Like the tea leaves, our leavings are also readable.

What I mean to say is that people die in pairs, creating accidental(?) marriages, pairings on the obituary page. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and George Balanchine. Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Despite all our efforts on our own behalf, dying, like jury duty, puts us back in the mix.

Who will we end up sitting next to on the bench outside St. Peter’s office in Heaven (or equivalent)? Even atheists and agnostics may have to admit to some degree of posthumous mortification looking back at their obits in the newspapers.

So who are the latest couple to have left together to go to tell their human stories to Whomever? None other than Willie Mitchell and Mary Daly. Who? Let’s just say this may be one of the oddest obit couples ever, or perhaps we are distilling ourselves somehow as Humanity.

Willie Mitchell was the trumpeter, bandleader and producer who brought us the third (and final) wave of sweet soul music from Memphis. As you probably know, Memphis sits at the top of the Mississippi Delta, the gateway from the Deep South to the North. The city that brought us Elvis (like Willie Mitchell from neighboring Mississippi), Sun Records (Elvis, Carl Perkins, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Howling Wolf), Stax Records (Booker T & the MGs, Otis Redding, Isaac Hayes). Originally it was W.C. Handy, another trumpeter/bandleader who “discovered” the Blues in Memphis. That would have been about a hundred years ago.

Willie Mitchell had a sweet band but he was looking to break into record production. He found an awkward kid from Michigan who had a great voice but still hadn’t found his style. Al Green could sound like Marvin Gaye, or Wilson Pickett. Willie Mitchell’s advice was simple: try sounding like Al Green.

The result, “Let’s Stay Together” (from 1971) on Hi Records is perhaps the sweetest soul song ever laid down. Willie Mitchell continued as Al Green’s producer/mentor for years during the periods when Al (like Little Richard) switched from sacred to secular styles. Willie Mitchell produced sweet soul music after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King (also in Memphis).

That was a miracle.

His deathmate couldn’t have been more different. Mary Daly was the quintessential radical lesbian separatist. Instead of “Let’s Stay Together” her message was surely: men stay away. She was a white Jesuit theologian who, once she had been granted tenure at Boston College, defied the Catholic Church to create a woman-based Wicca movement within the university’s teaching environment. It took decades for the school to finally get rid of her.

By that time she had published many books in her own super creative woman language, an alternative to male dominant Indo-European usages. Words like "hag" and "crone" took on new meanings. You can be sure that if this had been the Middle Ages and not the 1960s, Mary Daly would have burned at the stake. Or maybe been dunked to death. Instead she was able to teach a separatist feminist course at a formerly all male seminary and totally exclude men from her classes.

Yes, this was one tough woman.

In some ways her life was reminiscent of that of Anne Lee, who created the Shaker Church in America as a feminist/separatist experiment in the 1780s. Ms. Lee was beaten to death by angry Massachusetts witch hunters but her movement flourished for almost 100 years.

Mary Daly lived to see her defiance of the Catholic Church and her open lesbianism flow into the mainsteam. Perhaps not a remnant of the original all-embracing matriarchy from the ancient past, more like another quasi-male intellectual academic bent on self-differentiation. Still, Mary Daly hit a note that resonated with many other women totally sick of the male world. May their Circle someday open up for all of us...

You’d have to say that Mary Daly and Willie Mitchell represented two totally honest aspects of our life. Hopefully as they journey together through eternity, born in the same year, leaving two days apart, forever wedded together, their spirits can find a way to reinspire us to do both things: stay together, and relearn how to truly respect women.

[Carl R. Hultberg's grandfather, Rudi Blesh, was a noted jazz critic and music historian, and Carl was raised in that tradition. After spending many years as a music archivist and social activist in New York's Greenwich Village, he now lives in an old abandoned foundry in Danbury, New Hampshire, where he runs the Ragtime Society.]

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RIP Bobby Keane : The Rise and Fall of a Music Man

Ritchie Valens, left, and Bob Keane, then president of Del-Fi Records, on TV show in Los Angeles, 1958. Photo from Michael Ochs Archives / Getty Images.
Musician and music biz progidy:
The ill-starred life of Bobby Keane

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / December 4, 2009

Bobby Kuhn was born in California in 1922, at Manhattan Beach, later famous for its surf scene. Since the surfers hadn’t discovered the waves yet, Bobby was crazy for the Benny Goodman Band. Everyone was.

For one thing, Benny had an interracial unit when that really meant something back in the 1930s. It was Goodman’s wild experimental trad clarinet mixed up with all kinds of modern ideas, like black blues-jazz electric guitar (Charlie Christian), jazz vibraphone (Lionel Hampton), a teenage sensation white drummer (Gene Krupa). This was the future, man!

But first World War II, so Bobby Kuhn learned to fly and taught other U.S. Army Air Corps pilots to do the same. Before the war, Bobby had been the nation’s youngest jazz bandleader at age 17. After the war he substituted for Artie Shaw in that big band and later went on to create and perform music for early television. Somewhere along the line he changed his name first to Bobby Keene, than later, Bobby Keane.

The success his early promise had foretold had not been realized, so he decided to go into the record business. It was the mid-1950s and the teenage rock and roll scene was just taking off. His first big discovery was none other than Sam Cooke, who Keane picked out of the lineup of the Gospel singing Soul Stirrers. Cooke’s original hit, “You Send Me,” was recorded for Keane’s Keen Records label. But Bob Keane was pushed out of Keen Records as soon as Mr. Cooke’s success became a reality. Probably by the Mob, because soon Allen Klein was in charge of Sam Cooke’s career.

A year later (1958), Bob Keane discovered a burly Mexican American teenager driving some teenage girls crazy with an electric guitar at a show before a movie in LA. At Keane’s urging the kid changed his name to Richie Valens and, with Bob’s tutelage and grooming, soon became a top ten recording star. A year later, Richie Valens (along with Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper) was killed in a tragic plane crash.

Meanwhile Bob Keane, the producer, gave some future stars their first breaks. Soul singer Brenda Holloway, for example. Young recording studio prodigy Frank Zappa had just been busted for creating a soundtrack for a porno movie when he got to place some of his surf guitar and doo wop recordings with Keane’s new record company venture Del-Fi in 1963. Other Surf groups had recorded on this label, including the genre defining Surfaris. Here Bob was recording music from groups operating out of the beach town he had been born in.

But after all the tragic disappointments and small time success Bob Keane had suffered through in the record business, by the mid 1960s he was sure he’d found the big act he had been looking for. The Bobby Fuller Four, out of Texas, had it all. For one thing, in many ways they were the spitting musical image of Buddy Holly’s Crickets. Their first hit was a cover of Buddy’s “Love’s Made a Fool of You.” The group’s leader, singer, guitarist was the ultra clean cut non druggy but still somewhat wild, charismatic and soulful Bobby Fuller. The group could easily be as big as Paul Revere and the Raiders, for example.

Bobby Fuller: mob hit?
Bobby Fuller proved his worth soon thereafter in 1966 going right into the Top Ten with “I Fought the Law,” a song written by Sonny Curtis, one of the Crickets. This was it. Bob Keane had finally hit the big time with a solid group on his Del-Fi label. The promise he had shown in those early years, after all those discoveries he never got to benefit from, would surely be borne out when the Bobby Fuller Four created their legacy under his guidance.

But something went terribly wrong. Perhaps the cocky Bobby Fuller did something he shouldn’t have done. Like maybe ask the wrong people where his royalty money went. Whatever happened, later in 1966 young Bobby Fuller was found dead in his car near his house, the victim of (probably forced) gasoline ingestion. Don’t mess with the Mob.

So that was it for Bob Keane’s career in the big time music business. He went on to selling things door to door and managing his son’s rock band. It just goes to show that talent will get you nowhere if you don’t get and keep the right connections. The most amazing thing is that in the midst of this cesspool of greed, fear and exploitation some great music actually comes out once and a while.

Bob Keane was one of the guys who fought for talent, and though he ultimately lost all his commercial battles and his discoveries were mostly all doomed, the great music he recorded is with us still. Maybe Bob Keane knew that’s all that really matters,

RIP.

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Through the Gate in '66 : Howling Wolf Au Go Go

Chester Arthur Burnett, aka Howling Wolf.
When I was sixteen:
Hitting the Village with my grandfather

Wolf sang every song to the pretty hippie boy sitting directly in front of me, who turned out to be Davy Jones of the Monkees.

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / November 8, 2009

When I was sixteen I made a fateful trip to New York City to visit my grandfather, Jazz critic Rudi Blesh. Rudi lived off the Bowery and in the Village he was in his element.

Guiding me out into the New York night he brought me to this brightly lit venue on Bleecker Street. As we entered the dark nightclub and went to the table an amplified voice from a little booth quietly announced Rudi’s entrance. The pianist on stage (Erroll Garner?) quickly segued into a little bit of Trad Jazz (Memories of You?) and a little Ragtime bit. Perhaps even a spotlight might have found us at the table.

At any rate, I was mortified and on pretense of finding the men’s room I slipped out of the club. It was 1966 man, what did I need to be listening to Jazz for?

Coming on a little hole in the wall I realized it was the Night Owl, no longer a real cafe, just a poster shop. Still a teenage band was working out right at eye level. It was probably James Taylor, Danny Kortchmar and the original Flying Machine but it wasn’t the Lovin’ Spoonful so I got out of there with my $5 intact before they hit me for a charge.

Across the street down a flight of stairs was the Cafe au Go Go. The shill at the door was looking to fill some tables. “How much you got?” I told him $3 and he motioned to a second row table. The first act was the Siegal Schwall Blues Band. Having heard the Butterfield unit I wasn’t too impressed. Still they tried hard. The next guy who stumbled onto the platform was none other than Tim Hardin. This was important for me and I was floored, despite the fact that it was a short set and Tim didn’t really seem totally awake.

Art D'Lugoff at the Village Gate. Photo by Béatrice de Géa for The New York Times.
The next act took some time to set up on the main stage. What I got to see and hear next was none other than Howling Wolf with his band. The man sat in a chair with his microphone and harmonicas singing while his sharkskin suited accompianists played flawless electric Blues dancing side to side in lockstep behind him. Wolf sang every song to the pretty hippie boy sitting directly in front of me, who turned out to be Davy Jones of the Monkees.

There really are no words to describe this set for me. Pulling out of the club hours later and returning to the East 4th Street pad I had to smooth things over after ditching Rudi. Telling him I’d seen Howling Wolf didn’t hurt.

The man who’d announced Rudi’s entrance at the Village Gate was owner Art D’Lugoff. The club closed a few years ago (it’s now a CVS drugstore). Art himself passed away this week. He was eighty five years old.

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Photographer Roy DeCarava : 'The Sound I Saw'

Photographer Roy DeCarava. Photo by triggahappy76 / Flickr.
Roy DeCarava : 1919-2009

Photographer Roy DeCarava, who died Oct. 27 at age 89, dedicated his 60-year career to capturing images of African Americans. His subjects ranged from daily life in his hometown of Harlem to the Civil Rights movement, but his most noted work featured photographs of jazz greats like Duke Ellington, Thelonious Monk, Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong...

The first black photographer to win a Guggenheim Fellowship, DeCarava was also awarded the National Medal of Arts... In 1996, his work was the subject of a major traveling retrospective organized by the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.

NPR / October 30, 2009

"pepsi," 1964. Photo by Roy DeCarava.
The Sound I Saw:
Photography from a black point of view

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / October 31, 2009

Pictures of a man leaving the subway, of a saxophone, a black woman’s face. John Coltrane. Langston Hughes. The black New York City photographer who captured this Harlem history in its latter heyday was Roy DeCarava.

Educated at Cooper Union, and struggling to survive working as an illustrator, Mr. DeCarava always managed to find time to photograph ordinary life in his neighborhood. Whether it was the murky view out a dirty window from a cheap room, or the iconic image of a (now) Jazz Giant, Roy had a way of ennobling everything he snapped. But not in the usual style of strictly European art based traditions or sentimentality. It was as if the simple objects portrayed were the same as the faces of the people, of the Jazz musicians -- all possessing a story to tell.

What Roy DeCarava accomplished, and what we now take for granted, is a black point of view. What English word do we use to describe this type of vision? Good question. Perhaps it is better that it doesn’t have a name like “Soul” that could be easily turned into advertising copy and lose all meaning. What Roy DeCarava photographed was the tenderness and quiet pride flowing through everyday Harlem life, the smoldering Jazz solo across a smoke filled club, the structural beauty of a black person’s face.

Included in the seminal photo collection The Family of Man (1955), DeCarava was still mostly intolerant of the white art world. Although he received a Guggenheim Grant in 1952, Roy felt no need to acknowledge that art world or participate in the mainstream art scene. Instead he turned his own apartment in Harlem into a gallery for a few years, exhibiting the work of other art photographers. Instead of working for Life Magazine full time like black photo pioneer Gordon Parks, Roy DeCarava sponsored a protest against the publication.

Roy was also a great photography teacher (at Hunter College), sending hundreds of student camera eyes out into the streets in search of poetic truth. Roy DeCaravara’s great cultural accomplishment was to equate black street life with black Jazz, seemingly in an effort to ensure that one would not rise without the other. It was all about timing, whether it was Jazz, or Photography, or Life.

Asked what he saw in the Jazz performance that made it like photography he said: "I improvise. Improvisation is all about individual interpretations, individual expression. And that's what I'm doing." He also said: “in between that one-fifteenth of a second, there is a thickness.” That was a poet speaking. Roy DeCarava passed on this week, but his photographs are still telling their simple eloquent stories of black life.

Also see:

• Roy DeCarava, 89: Photographer acclaimed for haunting Harlem images by Matt Schudel / Washington Post / October 30, 2009
• A gallery of Roy DeCarava's photographs.
• An NPR interview with Roy DeCarava from May 1996

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Carl R. Hultberg : Jazz Cigarettes

Lester Young was left a shattered man. Photo by Herb Snitzer.
The Beatles called them 'jazz cigarettes'

Race mixing was the fear and marijuana perceived to be the social lubricant making it happen.

By Carl R. Hultberg / The Rag Blog / October 23, 2009

Jazz cigarettes. That’s what the Beatles called them, and you know they got that right. And that’s really the reason why those type of cigarettes are still illegal.

Jazz musicians.

What did that mean exactly back in the early years of the twentieth century? One thing really: black and white folks having fun together. Creating the potential for what? A once unspeakable thing that we now know as... people like Barack Obama. Race mixing was the fear and marijuana perceived to be the social lubricant making it happen.

As one “expert” testified in Congress when marijuana was being made illegal in the 1930s: “reefer makes a darkie look a white man in the eye.”

So Jazz musicians were hounded. A sensitive creative black genius like Lester Young was forced into the army. When the tough sergeant told Lester to get rid of that picture of a white woman, Lester replied that was his wife. The punishments and humiliations he was forced to undergo left Lester a shattered man, drained of the laconic spark he’d used to ignite the Basie band.

Gene Krupa, a young white Jazz drumming sensation was singled out for special attention in the 1940s. The movie The Gene Krupa Story (1959) would have been the first time many of us kids heard about the demon weed. How it ruined that young man’s life... or was it the years he was forced to spend in prison?

Another Jazz fiend (and friend of my grandfather) was Mezz Mezzrow, an early Jewish hipster clarinet player who moonlighted as pot dealer to the stars (Louis, Fats...) in 1930s/1940s Harlem. As Mr. Waller used to sing: “the real Mezz, but not too strong.” Fats Waller and his buddy, the Madagascarian Prince Andy Razaf would sit around smoking and writing the hit songs that are still famous. Some, like “I Can’t Give You Anything But Love,” they sold to white publishers for $10. That’s what you do when you’se a viper.

The bi-racial culture created by Jazz/Pot in the 1920s-1930s blossomed in the 1960s. Suddenly it all seemed to make sense. Drop out of the straight white culture. Become a non-conformist artist. A poet. A musician. A dancer. Get down with black Soul brothers and sisters.

Who knew the backlash that was coming? Nixon. Reagan. Rockefeller. NY State’s (and other state’s) repressive drug laws. Grand Juries (I was on one in NYC) indicting nobody but black and Hispanic street dealers. No undercover action in the yuppie office dealing scene, that’s for sure. But somehow that situation changed when 9/11 brought panic to America. How best to stop terrorism? That’s easy, mandatory drug screening for employees and job applicants.

Everybody knows that pot smoking leads to terrorism. Doesn’t it? As I said to my ex-boss as NYU after they’d rejected the best candidates for the job I was vacating: “There goes your talent pool.”

Think about it. Your employer or would be employer has the right to test your body, regulate your behavior off the job for reasons totally unrelated to ability or work performance. And we accept this, either because we have been totally cowed or else we smoke a little to help us cope with the Orwellian realities.

But wait, there’s hope. The president who represents the essence of free will (non-slave) race-mixing in the USA has ordered, through his black Attorney General, that Federal prosecution of state-condoned medical marijuana sales and use will be discontinued.

That’s right the black helicopters can take a break and the jackbooted DEA agents can lay off kicking down the doors of granny and grampa, puffing or growing a little on the side, if their states have medical marijuana statutes.

It is also totally within President Obama’s power to simply reclassify marijuana as a non-class B controlled substance. With states like California’s fiscal futures hanging in the balance, it’s hard to imagine that full scale legalization/taxation are not just around the
corner. But this is America and not doing the right thing is a long honored sacred tradition. Besides the folks who would be most effected by any legal change regarding weed are just too peaceful, philosophical and accepting to make a big stink. Don’t you wish more people were like that?

Smoke American

Previous title: “Legalize Mexico.” Stop the drug wars at home and abroad. Give people a future or else allow them the right to self medicate. On the positive side, just look at the brainpower behind the home growing revolution. It takes a lot of smarts to create the high potency potflower medical mind bongler material now in circulation (in some
places).

Another paradox of life. And also, another reason to be proud to be an American. Those are our kids developing tomorrow’s killer weed. Here’s a growing field (!) where the USA can still be #1.

Bong Hits for Jesus, anyone?

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American Jazz Musicians Struggle in Retirement

More than 100 musicians and supporters of "Jazz for Justice Artists!" turned out for a rally that began at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village. Photo: Kirsten Luce/New York Times
After years filled with jazz, struggling in retirement
By Emily S. Rueb / September 30, 2009

It was an unusual sight to see at a union rally, especially one in New York City: a processional of musicians, some wearing Mardi Gras beads, parading down West 4th Street on Tuesday afternoon, riffing on impromptu tunes and better-known anthems like “When the Saints Go Marching In.”

Despite the festive mood, however, the reason for the gathering of jazz musicians and officials of the union that represents them, Local 802, was the fact that many of the union’s jazz artists are struggling to support themselves in retirement. By organizing the event and the “Justice for JazzArtists!” movement, which has also been getting its message out with this video, the union is hoping to organize musicians and the venues where they play to assist them later in life.

“It’s about respect,” said Paul Molloy, a union spokesperson. “Regrettably, at the end of their lives they have very little to show for it.”

The story of the union and its efforts to maintain a robust retirement fund is long and complex, especially in recent years. It was organized in 1921 to provide benefits and collective bargaining power to musicians. It represents about 8,700 members in and around New York City, including Broadway musicians, orchestral musicians, recording artists, teaching artists, instrumentalists and a number of singers. Roughly one third are jazz musicians.

In the 1960s, legislation diverted tax revenues from admissions to Broadway, opera, ballet and concert performances to health benefits and the American Federation of Musicians pension fund, the latter of which now amounts to a $2 billion fund from which participating musicians can draw in retirement.

In 2006, Local 802 sought to include smaller venues, like jazz clubs, in the pension fund. It lobbied the state legislature to forgive the 8.375 percent sales tax for ticket sales at the door, with the hope that club owners would still collect the tax dollar amount and contribute it to the American Federation of Musicians pension fund. Gov. George E. Pataki signed the measure into law in 2007, but, according to Mr. Molloy, no one stepped up to organize contributions. While it’s hard to calculate how much money has been lost, the union estimates that a busy club charging 150 people a night a $30 cover charge can collect roughly $40,000 to 50,000 a week.

Some venues, like the New School for Jazz and Contemporary Music and Lincoln Center Jazz, participate in the pension plan, but many others operate with informal accounting and use cash-only transactions that make it easier to avoid passing on the savings. The overall goal of the protest was to get employers, including the clubs, to avoid this temptation and contribute.

More than 100 musicians and supporters turned out on Tuesday. One sat in the back row wearing a black Broadway Unions United T-shirt, a tuba in his lap. The rally began at the Judson Memorial Church in Greenwich Village and was led by Bob Cranshaw, the 76-year-old bass guitarist who has collaborated with the likes of Ella Fitzgerald, Thelonious Monk and Wayne Shorter.

The trumpeter Jimmy Owens recalled 1987, when Congress declared jazz a national treasure. He asked what’s become of that protection.

Councilman Alan J. Gerson stood up in front of the crowd and avowed his commitment to use the power of legislation, if necessary, to force the club owners to support their former employees. “Our government has a responsibility to ensure a place for art,” he said. “We want to encourage them,” he said about club owners. “But if they don’t do it voluntarily, then we need to make it mandatory.”

After several speeches accompanied by several soulful “mmmhmm”s and loud, exuberant applause, the attending musicians, many of whom had brought the tools of their trade, stood up and proceeded out down the stairs and onto the steps of a church facing Washington Square Park. They picked up ready-made signs scrawled with pithy summaries of Local 802’s demands and their instruments and paraded loudly to the Blue Note, one of the city’s most famous jazz clubs.

Many passers-by stopped and stared. One woman inside a building rushed to the window with an expression of surprise, then laughter.

When the procession reached the front of the club, Bill Dennison, a vice president of the musicians union, brought forward a petition as thick as a cereal box signed by more than 2,000 professional musicians that forcefully asked management to change its ways. The doors to the Blue Note did not open all the way. There was no dialogue. Mr. Dennison handed the stack of papers to a worker at the door, politely waved and thanked the representative and rejoined the crew outside.

The Blue Note had no comment.

At the rally, Craig Haynes, the son of the drummer Roy Haynes and a drummer himself who recently picked up the alto saxophone after a hiatus, said he does “a little bit of everything” to cobble together an income that supports his life in Queens. In addition to teaching and playing in schools, hospitals and churches, he also dresses up as an action hero and plays the saxophone outside Yankee Stadium. (He declined to identify which action hero as he wants to protect his anonymity). On a good night, he said, he can pull in $150.

“I have friends who make one million dollars a year,” he said. But most musicians, he said, work two to three times a week at $75 per night. “You might only make $5,000 a year.”

Also at the rally was Dick Griffin, a trombonist who said he felt lucky to have the cushion of Social Security from the federal government and a New York City pension, something he earned teaching music in public schools for 14 years. At 69 years old, he draws $172 a month from the musicians’ pension fund, the same amount that he’s been getting since he turned 55.

“I would be in bad shape,” he said, if he didn’t have access to the additional monthly support. “I couldn’t even buy subway fare.”

Source / New York Times

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Tina Marsh : Requiem for a Jazz Angel

Photo by Michael Fuentes.
Vissi d’arte:
Requiem for Tina Marsh, golden-voiced jazz angel
and fearless explorer of far-flung musical frontiers

Tina Marsh lived for art, and on Tuesday, June 16, she died for art in her South Austin home surrounded by family and friends. Tina was 55 years young.

By James Retherford / The Rag Blog / June 19, 2009

A personal reflection on the passing of an extraordinary woman …

I worked with Tina Marsh as graphic designer for the Creative Opportunity Orchestra from the beginning in 1980 for the next dozen years or so. The pay wasn't good, but the overall artistic rewards were priceless.

Tina's transcendent musicianship and vocality never failed to astonish me. How could a voice emerging from a place so deep and mysterious belong to a mere mortal? I often could not help but wonder whether -- like Sun Ra, another musical explorer who visited and left this planet before her -– she had come from another world, another plane of aural reality.

Tina's message of peace, love, and community belies a career fraught with struggle, setbacks, and disappointments, both professionally and personally. As I realized after a recent candid conversation with Tina's longtime friend and collaborator Alex Coke, a dedicated jazz artist in Austin is always about one illness or a couple cancelled gigs from homelessness. Tina's own hardships seemed to give her musical voice more urgency, more authenticity.

That voice is irreplaceable, but her work and her indomitable spirit can and must prevail.

Peace, love, and community.

Why don't you go down old Hannah,
well, well, well,
Don't you rise no more, don't you rise no more,
Why don't you go down old Hannah,
Hannah, don't you rise no more.

-- Leadbelly, “Go Down, Ol’ Hannah”

Heaven has added a shining new voice to the Celestial Choir, and, to honor the occasion, Gabriel is blowing hot triple-tongued riffs blessed by Louis, Dizzy, and Miles while angels arrayed in rainbow raiments dance on ribbons of light. Gene Ramey and Martin Banks sit in beside the Almighty Bandleader, saying “You go, Tina. You go, girl.”

Meanwhile here in Austin and the world, we lost a mostly underappreciated muse, but that’s how it is with our earthbound muses, and the teary-eyed children in and among us will huddle and embrace, humming a Huddie Ledbetter dirge.

Tina Marsh was a jazz adventurer, vocal explorer, orchestra leader and community builder, tireless messenger of harmony and hope. To borrow from one of her far-too-infrequent recordings, a simple pure-voiced rendition of Tosca’s evocative anthem, “Vissi d’arte,” Tina lived for art, and on Tuesday, June 16, she died for art in her South Austin home surrounded by family and friends. Tina was 55 years young.

Marsh was born in Annapolis, MD, in 1954, and arrived in Austin in 1977 after a short-lived East Coast career in musical theatre. Inspired by her friend and mentor, Roscoe Mitchell of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Tina reached out and embraced the freedom of musical expression called jazz. Inspired by Mitchell’s groundbreaking jazz collective, Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians (AACM), she then reached out and touched Austin’s struggling jazz community with a bold sense of possibility. In 1980, with co-founder Carl Michel, Marsh launched Austin’s venerable music cooperative of composer-improvisers, the Creative Opportunity Orchestra, and dared to venture into an unknown Texas frontier where avant garde jazz and free-form improvisational music had never stepped before.

When Michel departed for a teaching career in Minnesota after the first season, Marsh, by sheer force of will, kept CO2 moving ahead, writing and securing grants, seeking out and charming local benefactors, scheduling events and venues, coordinating travel and rehearsal schedules for 18-20 musicians (some from as far away as L.A. and NYC), reviewing new scores, composing, performing, teaching, overseeing CO2 community outreach programs to develop an audience for the music, planning promotional and advertising efforts, and all the while raising her two sons, Clay and Diamond Zeke -- and for more than a decade battling breast cancer.

Almost 30 years later, the Creative Opportunity Orchestra has performed locally, toured nationally, and garnered acclaim internationally. CO2 has produced five critically praised (but commercially less than successful) recordings, including 1994’s masterful “The Heaven Line.” More than 200 musicians have performed under the orchestra’s banner, including guest artists such as Mitchell, Carla Bley, Steve Swallow, Billy Hart, and Kenny Wheeler. From 2002-2006, CO2 produced an annual New Jazz Series, featuring national artists such as Hamiet Bluiett, Fred Hess, Ron Miles, Sue Mingus, and Boris Koslov producing and performing music with the orchestra.

Under Marsh’s direction, CO2 also produced model outreach programs for young people throughout Texas. The first, an after-school project at South Austin’s once-struggling Becker Elementary where Marsh was for many years artist-in-education, established classes in percussion, urban dance, simple wind instruments, and more. At the end of the school year, the children, joined by such well-known local musicians and artists as Oliver Rajamani, the late Martin Banks, Nicholas Young, Joel Guzman, and Marsh, staged a gala performance for parents and peers.

More than a decade ago, Marsh used her outreach experience to conceive and produce Circle of Light, an extraordinarily successful multicultural holiday program featuring Austin musicians performing the songs and dances of Christmas, Las Posadas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Diwali, and Ramadan in Austin schools and local venues. For a video feature on the Circle of Light school workshops, click here. For a preview of the film-in-progress about Circle of Light, click here.


Just as the Creative Opportunity Orchestra’s repertoire was not confined to performance, Tina’s creative interests were not confined to the orchestra. She composed, arranged, and performed music for choreographers Deborah Hay, Yacov Sharir and José Luis Bustamante, and her longtime friend Sally Jacques. She has performed and recorded with composer/saxophonist Alex Coke on Alex’s early 1980s gem, “New Visions” (whose album cover I designed), the Leadbelly Legacy Band (1989), the masterful 2002 “New Texas Swing” (featuring a soulful rendering of Leadbelly’s “Go Down Ol’ Hannah”), the powerful 2005 performances and recording of “Iraqnophobia/Wake Up Dead Man” (in collaboration with photographer Alan Pogue), and a recent highly experimental trio called “It’s Possible” (2008).

A 2000 session with New York pianist Bob Rodriguez, bassist Ken Filiano, and drummer Ron Glick produced a sterling performance of Marsh’s superb “Mezzaluna, Too.” More recently, in 2006, Tina teamed with pianist Eddy Hobizal and cellist Terry Muir to record “Inside the Breaking,” a haunting offering of arias, pop standards, and songs, including the aforementioned Puccini, Leonard Cohen’s “Anthem,” and Ornette Coleman’s beautiful “Lonely Woman.” A performance with Tosca String Quartet, celebrating the group’s 10th anniversary of “estrogen-driven musicality, “ can be seen here.

Marsh was inducted into Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2001 and the Austin Artists Hall of Fame in 2008, but, as noted jazz journalist Howard Mandel understates, “she has received woefully inadequate press attention outside her immediate locale -- much less than her music deserves, as it is always warm, penetrating or provocative, and satisfying.”


To call Tina Marsh a musical adventurer is nigh axiomatic. The Austin Chronicle's Raoul Hernandez once described her as "Billie Holliday meets Diamanda Galas for a drink at the Broken Spoke." On her MySpace page, Marsh lists Ella Fitzgerald, Sheila Jordan, Yma Sumac, Meredith Monk, and Nancy Wilson as her influences.

Mandel recently called Tina “a pure-voiced vocalist who employs extended techniques in dramatic interpretations of songs… with brilliant control for deep effect but who has also conducted a wild ‘n’ wooly ensemble through open structures to fine result and [has] been described as singing ‘scat to the highest power.’”

Austin American-Statesman writer Brad Buchholtz, in his
excellent tribute on Wednesday, noted that Tina, “as she demonstrated in her treatment of a song such as… Coleman’s 'Lonely Woman,' was in equal measure a 'vocalist' and 'singer.'"

“She could scat,” Buchholz wrote, “but her wordless vocal lines were more sophisticated than that. Marsh used her voice as an instrument to convey literal effects -- the coo of birds, the flutter of wings -- and in other contexts approximate the figurative: turbulence, vastness or longing.”

Tina’s sister, Val, told Buchholz, “I’m no expert. But when I sing and reach a pure note, I feel as close to God as I can get. And I know Tina was doing that all the time. It was like her constant prayer or chant or meditation. But beyond that, she had the genius and capacity to carry an audience with her.”

If there is a heaven, Tina Marsh already is carrying a new audience with her. Gene and Martin are proud.

Tina Marsh Memorial Service

Tina Marsh's Memorial Service celebrating her life, will be held this Saturday, June 20, 2009, from 4:30-6:30 p.m. at The One World Theatre, 7701 Bee Cave Rd, Austin, generously donated by proprietors, Nada and Hartt. Tina's CDs will be available for sale with proceeds going to the family for medical expenses. Donations are welcome as well. The service will be Quaker Style with a designated time for sharing a few words about Tina. There will be a pot luck reception following the ceremony at One World beginning at 6:30. -- Donna Menthol

A Tribute to Tina Marsh

CO2, CreOp Muse, and Sally Jacques’ Blue Lapis Light will present A Tribute to Tina Marsh at 7 p.m., Sunday, June 21, at the J.J. Pickle Federal Building, 300 E. Eighth Street in Austin. The tribute will precede Blue Lapis Light's new aerial ballet performance, “Impermanence.”

Pianist Eddy Hobizal and cellist Terry Muir, the Zeke Zimmerman Band, and past and present participants in Marsh's Circle of Light project will perform. A suggested donation of $10 will go toward paying Marsh's medical expenses. Anyone wishing to stay for the 9:15 p .m. performance of “Impermanence,” which is also dedicated to Marsh, may do so for an additional pay-as-you-wish price (suggested $10).

Requiem: Tina Marsh with pianist Eddy Hobizal and cellist Terry Muir



Seven YouTube offerings of a Tina Marsh live performance featuring pianist Eddie Hobizal and cellist Terry Muir:

• “Love Look Away” (Rodgers and Hammerstein)
• “Peace in the Valley”
• “Wondrous Love”
• "Je Crois Entendre Encore" (Georges Bizet)
• “What a Wonderful World ” (Louis Armstrong)
• “Because” (John Lennon)
• “Requiem” (Eliza Gilkyson)

Tina Marsh directs her composition, “Milky Way Dreaming,” with Diane Moser’s Composers Big Band, Montclair, NJ, July 2007:

• Part 1:
• Part 2:
• Part 3:

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Swingin' on Sunday - the Branford Marsalis Quartet

Eric Revis, Branford Marsalis, Justin Faulkner, l. to r., playing at
Jazz Alley, 20 March 2009. Photos by the author.
Branford Marsalis Quartet Plays Seattle
By Richard Jehn / The Rag Blog / March 22, 2009

Man, can these guys swing !!! The Branford Marsalis Quartet played a four-night gig in Seattle at Jazz Alley, and I was fortunate to hear about it early enough to get a seat for Friday night. First a small disclaimer - technically, it was not the Branford Marsalis Quartet, since drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts stayed at home taking a break. The great news, though, is that the quartet and their audience suffered not one whit for this personnel change. The sub-ing drummer was 18-year-old Justin Faulkner, a Philadelphia native who rendered a couple of awesome solos in the course of the evening.

The 'regular' musicians in this band are among the preeminent in their field. Eric Revis is a virtuoso with his bass, and his bald head glistened with the perspiration of his effort. Very fast, very precise, and an awe-inspiring soloist.

"Jack Baker," from the album Braggtown


Pianist Joey Calderazzo had a hard time sitting still during his first solo effort. I feared he might become one with the audience on more than one occasion he was so engrossed in his dynamic artistry with the keyboard.

Joey Calderazzo.

But the quiet star was the Marsalis of the mix. I have seen three of this Family play in my travels. Wynton played Benaroya Hall in Seattle with the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra several years ago and I had the pleasure of being there. It was pure luck that I saw Delfeayo's quintet in 1996 at Snug Harbor on the east side of the French Quarter in New Orleans. And now I have the privilege to witness Branford weaving his musical story with Friends he has played with for 10 years (well, not Justin).

The reason I said all that about the various Marsalis Brothers is that it is virtually impossible to convey their 'presence' in words. It is as though I forgot how humble and sincere the Marsalis Family are. So unassuming ... But in Branford's case on Friday night, his music was brilliant. He alternated tenor and soprano sax all evening, displaying complete facility with each. Awesome musician, there is no more I can say.

If ever you hear that these guys are coming to your town, don't even think about it - buy tickets !! You won't regret a moment of the experience, ever ...

For another review, see Hugo Kugiya's Branford Marsalis' quartet is at the forefront in Jazz Alley show in the Seattle Times.

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Alyce Guynn : Blue, Black and In Between

Poet and novelist Al Young. Photo courtesy of Gabrielle Motta-Passajou / Appalachian State University News.
Blue, Black and In Between

Have you seen her dressed in blue? ….
She comes in colors everywhere
She combs her hair; she’s like a rainbow
Coming, colors in the air
-- Rolling Stones

I’ve been contemplating the color blue
cultivating it, humming a Rolling Stones’ tune
reading Al Young’s Something About the Blues.
I love his take on the blues; I love his blackness.
More alluring, his kind of story-telling poetry.
More alluring for this whitey, honky Hillsboro hick,
than Elizabeth Bishop’s – don’t get me wrong –
I enjoy Bishop in small doses, very small doses.
With Young, I can put away the teaspoon,
pick up the oversized cup, drink and drink his words,
steeped in music. The music of which he writes is part
of the poetry he makes. The blues.

Blues don’t make you mean; they leave you moved.
The blues can move you to music, move you to poetry.
They can move you to wiggle your bottom, shake your booty,
dance naked, alone in your living room while a full moon
waxes just enough so the man in it looks at you a little lopsided.
That being not the once-in-a-blue moon, but the big ole’
yellow one that invokes images of veaudeaux magic
and humid nights listening to a jazz saxophone.

Can a white girl call him Trane? I think not. It is far too intimate, a term of endearment reserved for his peers. To me, he will remain Coltrane. Just as it would be despicable for me to express the same intimacy two black people can share when they fondly refer to each other as nigger. Even Charlie Mingus and Dizzy Gillespie said jazz was nigger music.
That’s okay.

It was not okay when my uncle would reach over, turn the dial from my favorite radio show, saying I’m not going to listen to that nigger music.
That was not okay.

And it wasn’t even jazz. Probably not even the blues. More ’n likely it was early rock ’n’ roll; quite likely it was from a musician of color, for those were my favorites then: Little Richard, Chuck Berry, The Coasters, The Platters, The El Dorados, Hank Ballard.
Oh, Hank Ballard.

Those songs weren’t what you’d call blues. Howlin’ Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed – those were blue. They were all black. It wasn’t until later I learned to appreciate the mind bending Miles, the cool, cool Coltrane, the crazy chaos of Charlie Mingus. But they knew the blues, long before they called it jazz. It was Duke Ellington who said,
Jazz is just a word.

It was much more than that for me in my late teens. For us, my group at college, it was a way of life. They (not we) called us The Jazzers. We disdained the sorority girls and fraternity boys while we formed our own. We didn’t wear any Alice Blue gowns, I guarantee you. It was black tights for the girls, fruit boots for the guys. We had our own dress code just as surely as did the penny loafer and pleated skirt crowd. It’s no longer black tights for me.
Now I running toward the blues.

Recently, I bought a straw hat, mostly for the wide headband and gargantuan bow in one of the most beautiful shades of blue silk shantung I have ever seen. I went searching for a way to call it. On the Internet I found a palette of blues where the one nearest to white was called “Alice Blue” named after Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter Alice, for whom in 1919 the song “Sweet Little Alice Blue Gown” was penned. Presumably the “Alice Blue” was the shade of her gown memorialized in song. People in my home town had long memories, for even though the song was popular in the twenties, they still quoted it when, in the late forties, they encountered sweet little me. I didn’t want to be Sweet Alyce then or later as a teen. I wanted to be tough – Camel-smoking, boot-stomping, whiskey- drinking tough.
I never was.

I am and always have been Sweet Alyce to the core. It is my nature to be more sweet than tough, which is not to say I can’t pitch a fit and break a lot of glass.

I love it now: my sweetness, my pastelness
that goes better with grey hair.

And while I don’t like to have the blues,
I love to listen.

I’ve been pondering blues.
Expanding the palette: a head band here,
a dangling blue opal there,
a carved blue agate cameo ring
dishing up a huge helping of Young,
slicing out a sultry evening with Coltrane
Seriously Reconsidering with Lowell Folsom
and Hiding Away with Freddie King.

Blues don’t make me mean or even melancholy.
They make me move, they melt me, bring me to a boil,
simmer, shimmer and shake, curl my hair.
They rattle my bones, ease my mind.

They reveal colors
coming everywhere.

© Alyce Guynn


Alyce Guynn / The Rag Blog
Austin, Texas
February 7, 2009


The Rag Blog

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Swingin' on Sunday - the East West Jazz Alliance

East West Jazz Alliance - In A Hurry / I Do Hope


Musicians: John Hansen, Phil Sparks, Daisuke Kurata, Atsushi Ikeda, Yasuhiro Kohama, Jay Thomas. Recorded: 2006 in Seattle, WA. [I'm quite sure this is Tula's on 2nd Street in Belltown, downtown Seattle.]

Source / Kelley Johnson

Many thanks to Kelley for sharing this with me / The Rag Blog

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