Back to facing the music

 I'm still working on the listening guides in Jazz Styles, a book that (except for the listening guides) I just finished reading recently. I've also added a bunch of interesting chunks of musical history to my collection, that I thought I would brag, er, write about.

I like the early pictures of Duke, because he doesn't show all the weariness of 50 years in the music business that his later pictures do. Just a happy, confident musician.

The top of that heap is the 3 CD set of Early Ellington: The Original Decca Recordings. This is an increasingly rare set that could be had on Amazon and E-bay forever, but almost always at ridiculous prices. So, when I happened to be surfing around and found one for less than $20, I was all over it. I really consider it a cornerstone of my collection, even though I've only had it for a few days. Of course, Mrs. S put it on for me the other night as our dinner background music, and she quickly thanked me when I walked right over to the iPad and put something else on. "I thought you wanted to listen to it," she said. I told her simply, that's music to study while listening to it, not to eat dinner. She said, "Well, thank God." Which is not to say there's anything wrong with the music, just, it's old, and it really takes a lot of focus and energy for a person living in the 21st century to listen to.

A subdued and simple piece of cover art, oddly compelling, that requires a second look, and then a third, just like Haig's music. 

Next is Al Haig's Will-O-The-Wisp, a collection of four ten-inch LP's from the '50's. This can actually be played during dinner to no great detriment, but it too is music I bought to study. I didn't know it, but Al Haig really is the grandfather of post-bop piano (Bud Powell fans: please give me a break on that one), and because of his work with the bop masters, he really laid the groundwork for a lot of the great pianists that were to come, like McCoy Tyner, Bill Evans, Ramsey Lewis, Ahmad Jamal and others. I find Haig's simple statements quite attractive because they are approachable to untalented players of little skill, like myself, making a decent sound not only attainable, but manageable.

How do you take a tax-deductible trip to France: Record your latest CD while you're there!

Then, speaking of Ahmad Jamal and getting some music we could listen to, we picked up the latest by "armadillo", as he's known in our house. ("Ahmad Jamal" in spoken Japanese sounds remarkably like "armadillo".) As I've indicated in my side bar: "It’s scary to think that Ahmad Jamal has been playing jazz piano for something like 20 years longer than I’ve even been alive. Maybe that’s why he sounds as good as he does. His original compositions also have a way of sneaking into your head for long periods of time, which means the best solution is to just put him on the iPad and leave him on." His music is just a joy.

Ah, it feels good to write about music again. I must do more of this in the very near future.

Advanced Jazz CD Collecting: A Quick “How To”

The basis for my jazz music collection has always been the Penguin Jazz Recordings Guide’s “Core Collection”. Remember that I started out in jazz without owning a single jazz album, except for three culled from a Wall Street Journal article about “must have” jazz recordings and some average stuff borrowed and burned from the library (I don’t do that anymore, so don’t call the FBI.) . So using the core collection of the Penguin Guide eighth edition, I began buying jazz CD’s.

As is to be expected with a list like the core collection, probably more than half the CD’s are common, relatively inexpensive, and easily found on amazon or ebay. But as you pick what I call the low hanging fruit, you are left with high hanging fruit that gets increasingly harder to find and more and more expensive. Some of the recordings are downright rare, and as I’ve written before, some can’t be had for love or money. They just aren’t out there. Be that as it may, I am dangerously close to completing the core collection with only one or two substitutes, but no integral gaps from the 188 selections.

Notice there that I say “selections” because some are multi-disc sets and some recordings are now available either as parts of boxed sets or other compilations. That complicates matters. So here’s the “how to” for completing the core collection:

1)  Get the easy ones first. Lots of artists can be had for just a couple of bucks: Bill Evans, Miles Davis, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, etc. Most every selection on amazon will have a “People who bought this also bought…” underneath with a bunch more of the selections you will need to complete the collection. Pick up what you need.
2)  Buy used. Used CD’s are almost always half the price of new, or less. There are some CD’s I literally picked up for the cost of shipping. 
 3)  Keep track of what you have and what you don’t. You will quickly form a mental database that will help guide your search and will alert you when you come across something rare or hard to find.
4)  If you see one of the rare ones, buy it. You have to convince yourself that money is not an issue here, because there are some that I have seen and failed to purchase because I thought it too expensive, and then I never saw the thing again. It’s frustrating. More frustrating than breaking the budget.
5)   Search ebay and amazon everyday. The foreign amazon sites are also worthwhile. I found some on amazon Japan that I couldn’t find anywhere else. Use the wishlist (amazon) and watchlist (ebay) to keep your eye on prices and availability.
6)  Spend the time and money.
7)  Listen and enjoy your collection. You deserve it.

Depending on the availability of one or two CD’s and whether I opt to substitute or not, I should finish my core collection by the end of March. I plan to take a picture of me sitting in the middle of all those CD’s. It’s going to be exciting.

A new approach

Since my jazz arranging kept me away from the piano for so long, I’ve found myself curiously unmotivated to sit down and play. Oh, I have sat down and played some, for sure, even making a fair go at a few tunes I remain familiar with and just enjoy hearing on occasion. But I have not done anything constructive to improve my playing in probably the last six months.

On a whim, and because it was cheap, I picked up Oscar Peterson Plays the Duke Ellington Songbook CD. And while I thought this was him soloing, it turns out to be two of Oscar’s trios playing twelve songs each. And it is simply wonderful. Now, I’ve had the Oscar Peterson Plays Duke Ellington transcriptions forever, and long since relegated it to the “when I’m concert pianist level, maybe I’ll pull this out” section of my music book library. But taking a look at it again while listening to my new CD yesterday, it didn’t look nearly as foreboding as I remember it. And while it does not appear that the transcriptions in the above-mentioned book are from any of the recordings in the above-mentioned CD, it looks like they might be similar enough that I’ll be able to get something put together by listening to the CD and then sitting at the piano.

At any rate, I’ve decided to take a new approach to learning piano over the summer, namely, I’m going to learn to play a few Ellington tunes in the style of OP. Wish me luck.

Admitting to going a little crazy of late

The job is literally killing me, sending me to the doctor every week as bad things happen to my body, such as my arm going numb one night (better now, thanks), gaining eight pounds in two weeks (dropped four since), and even losing a crown from my wisdom tooth. To cope, I just decided to keep myself occupied with music. And since I’m studying jazz arranging, I’ve been focusing on big band stuff to keep my muse energized. Here’s what I’ve acquired, just in the last two weeks:



By far the CD getting the most listening right now is Abdullah Ibrahim’s Bombella. The WDR Big Band just blows Ibrahim’s arrangements right out the door and halfway up the street. If you could hear the sound of energy, this is what it would sound like.

A close second is the Bill Holman Big Band compendium. Talk about fun music! I’ve only listened to about five songs so far because I can’t stop myself from going back for seconds and thirds. The thing is just amazing.

In third, I have to go with Buddy Rich for two reasons: one, he and his bands embody the west coast sound and are similar enough to Stan Kenton as to be confused with those great works, and two, his version of Love for Sale is probably the best ever recorded. Brilliant.

And this recent trend gave me a good idea that I’m happy to announce here: I’m doing away with the Yoity Tot “B” List and breaking it out into The Yoity Tot Big Band CD list and the “regular” Yoity Tot CD list. It’s going to take me a little bit to put those together, so keep watching this space for that change.

Keep it jazzy, folks!

Two additions to the Yoity Tot CD List

Just in time for Christmas (well, not really), here are two CD's I highly recommend. I love them both so much, I'm going ahead and adding them to the Yoity Tot CD list. Tony Bennett's "Jazz" makes it on the strength of his interpretations of many great jazz standards. I especially love his takes on Ellington's Don't Get Around Much Anymore and Solitude. Also, the recording is chock full of other jazz superstars, like Herbie Hancock, Count Basie, Stan Getz, Art Blakey, and many more.

The latest recording by Gordon Goodwin and his Big Phat Band is the other going on the list and in the top spot. Honestly, I haven't heard the entire recording yet because I can't get past Senor Mouse, but this rousing, full-out, big band stuff just gets in my blood and sends shivers down my spine. My love for jazz just deepens whenever I hear jazz done right, and George and BPB do it right. That's all I can say. It's a freakin' great recording.

Personal note of (some) interest (maybe): It's a little funny that I discovered Gordon Goodwin the day before my birthday and his band's latest recording is titled "Act Your Age". I turned 45 today, so I'm officially "pushing 50". That means if I act my age, realizing my dream of someday conducting in front of a big band will be really, really hard to achieve. So to hell with that. I've decided to pursue that dream nonetheless. I'll save "my dream" entry for another day...

The Audition

Before reading this entry, it would be good if you read the first part. (This entry won’t not make sense, but it will lose some of its impact if the two episodes are read out of order.)

Come Thursday, and my company begins the process of laying people off. Since I work in HR, that fills up my half day so that it just whizzed by and I didn’t have fifteen seconds to think about my audition. But, I did take care of everything I needed to take care of and I did leave on time, stopping to buy some stuff for lunch. After eating lunch, I went straight to the piano and began practicing.

I got out a recording of Thelonious Monk playing Duke Ellington and worked on It Don’t Mean a Thing. I improved it a lot in the thirty minutes I spent on it. I went over and over the back end to get my timing down, and I played the chromatic bass line chords to eradicate some less useful chords that were still in muscle memory that I no longer wanted to use. It tightened up a bit, but I left it a little ragged. I figured I didn’t want to sound above my actual level of skill at the audition, as if that might be an issue. I decided I would not play A Child is Born, because that requires some pedal and light keyboard work, and I wasn’t sure what quality of piano I was going to have to play on. I decided a rough version of Bewitched would do for the ballad, and I just played it through a few times to freshen it up. Then, I worked on Blue Monk. Over and over. Again, I smoothed it a little, but not enough to impress anyone. And again, that would give a better indication of my actual playing level.

So I drive over to the audition, and the jazz ensemble director is there waiting for me. He recognizes me right away (we’d met before), and we chat briefly as we make our way to the practice room. If the following is read at normal speed, it will very closely approximate the beginning of the actual audition:

Him: So, I couldn’t find any jazz music books, other than this mini-book of chord changes, so I’m not sure if you...
Me: Well, I brought my Real Book.
Him: Okay, Real Book. Great. That’s even better. Turn to Blue Bossa. (!) Do you know it?
Me: Actually, my instructor and I looked at it last night, but that was the first time I’d ever tried to play it and I didn’t even glance at it after the ...
Him: That’s good. Here we go, 1, 2, ah 1, 2, 3, 4...

And he started playing it, strumming away on his guitar, just like that. Ten seconds we’d been in the room, and I’m bashing out a semblance of a tune on the piano. I sounded terrible, but for the most part, I kept up. What I played in the right hand was more or less what it needed to be. What I played in the left hand were chords that vaguely followed the printed page. I was still able, however, to assemble everything together at the ending C-minor. He said he liked my chording, but he then proceeded to tell me a bunch of ways to “jazz them up”. He also then had me improvise to the chord without playing them, which I actually did pretty well with. Ten minutes, and the audition was over.

The long and short of it is, because I’m not enrolled as a regular music student, I get last choice of classes. The ensemble director told me that I was not good enough for the advanced ensemble on Thursday, but he might be able to fit me into the Wednesday ensemble, depending on whether there was already a piano player in that group or not.

Play on the upbeat

I just got done managing my company through a rigorous four-day audit that was conducted in only three days. The highlight of the three days was being able to go to my piano lesson, even though it came at what was the end of the equivalent of a fourteen hour day, in which I hadn't slept for over 16 hours. It was not easy.

I played Don't Get Around Much Anymore and Blues for Alice, neither in a particularly good-sounding or facile manner. It was a struggle. My instructor threw me off my playing style by saying, "Play with a lighter touch" just before I start DGAM, which I play sort of heavy handed because I like to accentuate the no-chord areas and the oblique movements, so by the time he told me to go back to playing my normal style, there was just nothing left in the tank. We talked about syncopation and playing on the off beats, then playing on the upbeats, on BFA. I listened and watched, and thought I would be able to do it.

When I got home last night, there was nothing to do but keep playing piano, so I did. I couldn't hit the syncopation, and there was nothing doing with the offbeats, especially in the bars with triplets. I tried playing on the upbeats, and that seemed to work, but it didn't sound good.

Today, I had another twelve hour day, but the audit is over. Tonight I will watch the Cavs steal one from the Celtics, drink beer, and then I will try again to do something different with the tunes. Or maybe, I will take my upbeats to sleep and be done with it.