A Personal View of Count Basie

Count Basie at the piano accompanying vocalist Ethel Waters with his band in the 1943 film Stage Door Canteen (from Wikimedia Commons, public domain)

A little over a week ago KQED broadcast a repeat screening of Jeremy Marre’s 2018 documentary Count Basie: Through his own eyes, which was first broadcast on December 1, 2019. The film is a rather unique achievement, since, during his lifetime, Basie did his best to keep his “public persona” to himself. As far as he was concerned, his public should only care about the music he made; and the rest of his time he kept to himself.

That privacy was understandable, since his only child, Diane, was born with cerebral palsy. In spite of influences to turn her over for care from an institution, Basie and his wife Vivian were determined to keep her at home. They all defied physicians’ expectations in getting her to learn how to walk, after which she also learned to swim. She also outlived both of her parents.

Basie was also private about his politics. He was a strong supporter of Martin Luther King and participated in the March on Washington. However, he kept his profile low, never trying to seize the spotlight from King or the reason for the march. Marre’s film includes interviews with musicians that played for Basie, and there are plenty of anecdotes of the trials that a colored band had to endure with a concert tour that took them through southern states.

As a result, the public side of Basie was all about the music. He was more interested in maintaining good work relations with everyone in his band, rather than cultivating the sort of public persona that one encountered in, for example, Duke Ellington. Ultimately, Basie’s largest audiences were probably those that traveled to Las Vegas to listen to Frank Sinatra sing. Basie had no trouble letting Sinatra take the spotlight, but Basie was still the one with the last word on arrangements.

That said, there is no shortage of music and footage of the Basie band in Marre’s film. However, the music is there to supplement our appreciation of not only Basie the family man and Basie the leader of a band but also Basie the father in a colored family that, in the interest of his profession, would suppress his personal feelings about racism in the interest of providing gainful employment for all of his players (as well as himself).

Rousing Jazz from Bernstein’s MTO West

Steven Bernstein with his slide trumpet (from his SFJAZZ event page)

Those who read this week’s Bleeding Edge article know that one of the major events of the week was trumpeter Steven Bernstein’s four-night residency at the SFJAZZ Center, which involved three different programs presented in the Joe Henderson Lab. Bernstein is engagingly brash in his arrangements, which cover music from some of the earliest days to jazz all the way up to the rich diversity of pop during the last quarter of the twentieth century, as well as his original compositions and his capacity for improvisation. For the first two nights of his residency, he led his Sexmob quartet, whose other members are Briggan Krauss on saxophones, Tony Scherr on bass, and Kenny Wollesen on drums. The first night took on music that Nino Rota composed for films made by Federico Fellini, while the second night shifted to the extensive repertoire of Duke Ellington.

Last night was the first of two nights at which Bernstein scaled up to the repertoire of his Millennial Territory Orchestra (MTO). MTO was formed in New York, where Bernstein is based; but last night he presented a “Western edition” (my shameless appropriation of someone else’s pun) featuring Bay Area jazz luminaries. The members of Sexmob formed the core; and they were joined by Jenny Scheinman on violin, Ben Goldberg on clarinet, Howard Wiley on tenor saxophone, Jeff Cressman on trombone, and George Samuels on guitar. The core of the repertoire draws on music from the pre-swing era territory bands that crisscrossed the country in the Twenties and Thirties; but the performances are grounded solidly on the rich diversity afforded by our “new millennium.” Thus, while last night’s selections were grounded heavily in the book of Count Basie, at least one of the Basie selections was heavily colored (in purple?) by the influence of Prince. (Was this a deliberately prankish “Prince meets Count” move by Bernstein?)

Nevertheless, over the course of last night’s first one-hour set, MTO covered far more than Basie originals. The group opened with W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues” with a nod to Basie’s arrangement. Bernstein explained that, shortly after the original MTO was formed, the group played the piece at the funeral of Lester Bowie (co-founder of the Art Ensemble of Chicago), who had died on November 8, 1999. After that Bernstein decided that every subsequent gig would begin with “St. Louis Blues,” honoring the recent past of Bowie with the more distant legacy of Basie and Handy. That elegiac synthesis of recent and distant past also surfaced in “Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love,” which Charles Mingus composed a few month’s after Ellington’s death. (Mingus had played bass for Ellington early in his own career and was subsequently fired by him.) Bernstein turned to Mingus because he felt the music the group was playing needed more harmony, and Mingus brought to jazz some of the richest harmonic textures to be encountered this side of Richard Wagner.

Another past-in-the-present offering was the Bessie Smith song “Put It Right Here (or Keep it Out There)” (performed without a vocalist to keep the evening G-rated). Smith had sung in the film St. Louis Blues, an early two-reeler based on the Handy song (which Smith sang). Of a similar vintage was the account of “The Boy in the Boat,” originally given an overtly effeminate delivery by George Hannah accompanied at the piano by Meade Lux Lewis. Bernstein referred to the song as X-rated without going into details. (It was about sex between women; and, again, the music was performed without the words.)

As diverse as the repertoire were the styles of performance contributed by the individual MTO West players. Bernstein is a generous leader, making sure that each of the band members had more than ample time to exercise his/her own interpretations of the tunes. Those receiving particular attention were Wiley for his tenor work and Scheinman on violin. Samuels was a newcomer to the group, put he had a chance to display some engagingly intimate duo work playing against Scheinman’s pizzicato.

Bernstein himself has established his talent on the slide trumpet, an instrument about as obscure as the “Boy in the Boat” song. By using a slide, rather than valves, Bernstein could color his melodic lines with a portamento delivery that recalled vocal styles of a century ago (Smith being a good example). Given the size of the instrument, pitch control is far more difficult than on a slide trombone; but there was never any uncertainty in Bernstein’s melodic lines. Over the course of his set, he also played both a standard valve trumpet and flugelhorn.

Nuts-and-bolts-aside, though, what made last night memorable was the consistently vigorous energy coming from the group as a whole. Bernstein’s attention to harmony meant that all accompanying textures were solidly well-blended; and this was most evident in the subtle shadings that emerged when Goldberg, Wiley, and Krauss played as a group. MTO West was probably the largest ensemble I had encountered in the Henderson Lab, but they never sounded too loud. Rather, they delivered vigorous accounts of every selection with each player consistently given his/her all while Bernstein kept control over who was doing what and for how long. The group will return to Henderson tonight for sets at 6 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. As of this writing, the later set is almost sold out; but tickets are still available for both.

Swing Music Coming to Bird & Beckett

from the Bird & Beckett event page

Having written earlier this summer about the “late show” jazz concerts at Bird & Beckett Books and Records, I wanted to let readers know that this month will conclude with a gig for the early-to-bed-early-to-rise set. The program will focus on the classic swing music of the late Thirties; and it will be performed by a group that calls itself “Swings Left,” created and led by pianist Rob Reich. The book for this group includes familiar tunes popularized by the likes of Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw; and Reich usually adds some of his own originals to the mix. Swings Left is a quartet whose other members are Ben Goldberg on clarinet, Andrew Stephens on trumpet, and Ollie Dudek on bass.

This concert will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Friday, August 31. Bird & Beckett is located at 653 Chenery Street, which is a short walk from the Glen Park BART station. It can also be reached by the Muni J trolley, which runs down Church Street and whose schedule is not impacted by the closing of the Twin Peaks tunnel. Admission will be by donation, with a recommended amount of between $10 and $20. For students, musicians, and those with low income, a donation of $5 will be viewed as acceptable.

"… we never knocked nobody else's music."

The above quote is from Billy Eckstine. I encountered it because, in my efforts to be a better listener to jazz, I decided to provide myself with historical context beyond what I had acquired from Robin Kelley's Thelonious Monk book. Therefore, I am currently reading Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s by Ira Gitler. Gitler provides a loose narrative framework for the individual statements he has compiled, but he says little about the reliability of his sources. He just lets those sources speak for themselves; and, when the sources contradict each other, the reader has do decide whom (if anyone) to believe.

Thus, it is a bit idealized to take Eckstein at face value and assume that, in the early days of the 52nd Street clubs, everyone had good things to say about everyone else (or at least refrained from saying nasty things). However, there are definitely stories of good will and generosity where you might not expect to find them. Thus, when Eckstein talks about starting up the band that provided a platform for Dizzy Gillespie, he described how Count Basie offered to let him use some of his own scores while that band was beginning to build up their repertoire. One might not normally associate Basie with the emergence of bop modernism; but there he was, at least in spirit.

Flash forward now from 1944 to Sunday afternoon, December 8, 1957, back in the days when CBS had a live television program called The Seven Lively Arts. The program aired on this particular date was called The Sound of Jazz. It was produced by Robert Herridge and organized by Whitney Balliett and Nat Hentoff, and it is now available in its entirety in a 2-DVD collection entitled The Greatest Jazz Films Ever. Kelley's book offers the following recollection of Monk's appearance on this program:

While Monk was doodling around with the piano during a coffee break, the stagehands, cameramen, and everybody who could hear him wandered over to the piano. Then in came Count Basie and Billie Holiday, and Lester Young—all the stars! They gathered around the piano and stared as though they'd been hypnotized, as though it was the first time they'd ever heard anything like that. The director was so impressed by the expressions on their faces that he had Billie and Count and the rest of them stand at the piano when they show went on the air, just so he could televise their reactions while Monk played.

For the record Monk played "Blue Monk" with Abdul Malik on bass and Osie Johnson on drums. Basie was the only one who showed up on camera, and Monk did not like his presence at all. To the contrary, he found it distracting. However, having seen this video myself, I have to say that Basie seemed to be both attentive and appreciative. On the basis of Eckstine's anecdote, I am willing to give Basie the benefit of the doubt and assume that his appreciation was sincere, although I would be a bit surprised if this had been his first opportunity to see Monk perform. On the other hand I have to wonder whether or not he was aware of Monk's irritation, in which case he may have been torn between respecting Monk and respecting the authority of those only interested in producing "good television."

This was not Monk's first encounter with television. He had been a guest when Steve Allen was hosting The Tonight Show back in 1955. Conditions there were probably much more to his liking. Still, in today's world of American Idol, it is hard to imagine network television doing anything even remotely close to the encounter that CBS had arranged.

Oscar Peterson in Jazz History

After all that writing about Bach, I settled down to watch the 3 PM telecast of the BBC News and learned that Oscar Peterson had died. I was glad to see that the BBC chose this as a "front page" story, even if their coverage left more than a little to be desired. Anyone who has any question as to the importance of reporting the death of such an important jazz pianist would to better to consult Wikipedia over the BBC, since this entry is less concerned with the personality of the man and more with his position in the grand scheme of jazz history.

The difference between the two accounts is most evident in the dog that failed to bark in the BBC account. That dog, of course, was Art Tatum, regarded by many as the strongest influence on Peterson. At the risk of making it all sound too reductive, just about any form of Western music comes down to the art of embellishment, how and where it is applied, how extensive it is, and, as the forms became more developed, how embellishments themselves could be embellished. In the history of classical music, Franz Liszt pushed embellishment to extremes that could be exasperating, if not offensive to some of more disciplined natures. To call Tatum the Liszt of jazz would not constitute offense to either pianist. Indeed, one of the frequent comments made about the vast catalog of Tatum recordings is that a little bit can go a long way.

However, in the spirit of that analogy, if Tatum was the Liszt of jazz, then Peterson was its Busoni, highly virtuosic in his understanding of both how to apply embellishment to the underlying "text" (i.e. song) and how to execute the embellishing without the embellished getting lost in the blur. When the CD was finally released of a session organized by Norman Granz that brought Peterson together with Count Basie, this was the first sentence on the back of the jewel case:

It could be argued that no two pianists could be more unalike than Count Basie, the master of understatement, and Oscar Peterson, the avatar of speed, power, and embellishment.

My own pet name for this CD is "The Minimalist Meets the Maximalist." The "official" name, however, is The Timekeepers, wherein all proper respect resides. Time was of the essence for both of these men, who knew full well that, without an "art of time," there is no "art of music." Thus, time was also the one element that could unite two such disparate performers, each of which understood the other in terms of strategies for how time passes (that last phrase having emerged in the title of an essay by Karlheinz Stockhausen, who may not have been a slouch where jazz was concerned).

Basie died back in 1984. Indeed, too many of the greatest who had performed so well with Peterson are gone as well. Atheist that I am, I still cannot resist the fantasy that they are all up there in heaven waiting for Oscar to join the jam. Meanwhile, there is so much of Oscar in every recording he made that the rest of us can keep learning to be better listeners from those recordings for some time to come.