A Stroll in the Gallery: Duke Ellington in Paris

Herman Leonard. Duke Ellington at the Olympia Park Theater, Paris. 1958. Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans.

NPR (050707) featured an interview with Herman Leonard reminiscing about the jazz musicians he photographed over a 60-year career. The NPR web page includes photos and text:

Photographer Herman Leonard, 84, captured jazz giants like Billie Holiday and Miles Davis on film as they worked in smoky, cramped, late-night clubs. But he almost lost his amazing collection to Hurricane Katrina.

As the storm bore down on New Orleans, Leonard rushed most of his negatives to a vault at a museum near his home. However, thousands of his prints were lost to the flood waters.

Some of the photos that were salvaged went on display last month at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art in New Orleans. And Leonard's latest book, Jazz, Giants and Journeys, includes a full collection of photos that span his long career.

Leonard tells Michele Norris he's grateful for what he was able to salvage from the storm, but much like favorite recipes, photographic prints never turn out the same way twice. He hasn't moved back to his home city of New Orleans, and says he'll live there again only if the city can regain some semblance of what it once was.

A Stroll in the Gallery: Billie’s Killer Shoes

Herman Leonard. Billie Holiday’s Shoes. 1955. Ogden Museum of Southern Art, New Orleans.

Jazz photographer Herman Leonard told NPR why he chose this shot Lady Day’s shoes: "I thought to myself, this sort of epitomizes her life. She was in chains most of the time. She never really had any full control of her own life," he says. "I like to photograph images — particularly of well-known people — where you don't see their face, but the image does express part of their personality."

Café Mouffe Presents: Henry Butler

After talking about Henry Butler’s photography at MIT, I’ve been hankering to hear some of his music. Here’s a YouTube clip of Henry Butler and Bruce Katz at the Clavia booth at the NAMM 2007 trade show. Henry plays a Nord Stage and Bruce jams on a Clavia C1 organ. This blues sounds like it could go on forever; too bad the clip cuts out so abruptly.

Want more? Another clip features Henry Butler at SxSW. He accompanies an unidentified gospel singer in a church illuminated by stained glass windows. The sound is quite good for a cell phone recording from the audience, and even though the performers are telescopically distant, I like the dark mysterioso effect.

While you’re YouTubing, check out this clip of the blind pianist driving a car.

Café Mouffe: In Memory of Slava

Sleepless in Cambridge. Woke at 4 a.m. to BBC and sad news that Mstislav Rostropovich had died in Moscow this morning at age 80. So the Mouffe will depart from its usual jazz format to pay tribute with this YouTube clip of Rostropovich performing the Bourreé from Bach´s Suite for Solo Cello in C Major. Violistarevirtuoso, who posted the clip, wrote, “WE´LL MISS YOU. THANKS FOR THE MAGIC YOU LEAVE BEHIND.” Amen.

I remember hearing Rostropovich in 1974 when he performed the Dvorak cello concerto with the Dayton Philharmonic Orchestra. This was shortly after his political exile from the USSR, and shortly before he became conductor of the National Symphony in Washington. I had free press passes, and I took my father to the concert. It became one of my first experiences with realizing through someone else’s eyes what I could not see. My dad did a deft job of narration. He was impressed by the cellist’s hands (“they’re huge”), the way Slava enveloped his instrument (he was huge, too), and the way he jutted his jaw and jerked his head, emphatically urging the orchestra to pick up the tempo. After the performance we tried to go backstage on the press pass, but the line outside Rostropovich’s dressing room was too long. That night remains one of my most cherished memories with my father.

I am not ready to let him go. Here is a clip of Slava performing the Prelude to Bach’s Cello Suite No. 1 in G major (BWV 1007). The YouTube sound can’t begin to approach the acoustics of his 1995 recordings of the complete cello suites, but this looks like it came from the DVD of the same performance. The opportunity to see him at the cello in that spare, resonant cathedral is extraordinary.

Café Mouffe Encore: Dancing in Your Head

After watching a lot of Ornette Coleman clips last night, I was mesmerized by the memory of this 1976 album. I don’t have it (yet) on CD, or I would have listened immediately. Ornette’s riffing on the Rome 1974 clip brought it all back. I yearned to hear "Midnight Sunrise" with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, Morocco. My body ached for the hypnotic trance embedded in memory. I could tast the music like an acid flashback. I don’t mean acid reflux. As I wrote last night, those were the days.

Amazon.com’s editorial description, written by Stuart Broomer, evokes it well:

While Ornette Coleman still performed in the classic acoustic-quartet configuration during the mid-1970s, he also began working with younger musicians, usually bearing electric guitars. This Coleman group, recorded in Paris in 1976, is the first incarnation of the band that would become Prime Time, and the "Theme from a Symphony" is a perky Coleman tune previously called "School Work" (on Science Fiction) and "The Good Life" (in the symphonic Skies of America). Coleman plays constantly here, blowing alto atop the layered, pulsing, synchronous rhythms of the band. A special relationship forms between the leader and the brilliant electric bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, their phrases often mirroring one another, while guitarists Bern Nix and Charlie Ellerbee and drummer Ronald Shannon Jackson create a field of complex, dancing polyphony. Static and dynamic elements are recast as the group creates a sense of constant movement without conventional musical development. There's an element of funk, certainly, but the music is characterized by a trancelike quality that has affinities with minimalism and some African music. The roots of Coleman's new conception are apparent in the two pieces called "Midnight Sunrise," taken from the extensive tapes he made in 1973 playing with the Master Musicians of Jajouka, the hypnotic Moroccan ensemble of winds, strings, and drums.

Café Mouffe Presents: Ornette Coleman

In tribute to Ornette’s Pulitzer Prize for Music, here is a YouTube clip called Rome 1974 Part 1. This is the music of his 1973-5 recordings for Dancing in Your Head , heard here on a smaller, slightly less intense scale. It looks and sounds like it was recorded in a garage, but hey, those were the days. Listen to Ornette’s gritty- funky-fluid lines. If that gets your heart beating, try two later performance clips, live 1979 and Ornette Coleman & Prime Time with Pat Metheney. The first includes Coleman’s son Denardo on drums. The second was recorded in 1988 at the Montreal Jazz Festival. Brace yourselves, it smokes.

I haven’t found Rome part 2 yet. Here’s the lineup: Ornette Coleman: saxo ; James Ulmer: guitarra ; Sirone: bajo; Billy Higgins: batería.

Café Mouffe is Back with Dave Brubeck

The Mouffe took ten, but it feels right to return after this hiatus with a YouTube clip of Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. This performance was recorded in 1961. You won’t see much of Brubeck, but you’ll hear him. If your ear is accustomed to the 1959 hit recording, Paul Desmond’s improvisation here sounds freshly lilting. And there’s a swinging drum solo by Joe Morello. His animation (and horn-rimmed glasses) remind me of my brother-in-law Harold, who was pounding the skins in a regional jazz band around the same time. I was six and thought he was cool. Still do. I have a vivid memory of Diana and Harold taking me to an outdoor Brubeck concert around this time, but they don’t remember it at all. Am I channeling some alternate reality?

If that’s not enough, here’s another YouTube clip of a later performance, maybe from the 70s. Brubeck has wild, Beethoven-like hair, and Desmond looks avuncular like Mr. Rogers. Hard to believe he was a junkie.

Café Mouffe: Take 5

No music video today at Café Mouffe. I’d love to chill but need to hold my own feet to the fire to finish the horn charts for my OSU gig next Tuesday. Look for the Mouffe on April 6.

Café Mouffe Presents: Bill Evans

I’m mesmerized by the motion of expressive hands on the keyboard. I see hands talking in vivid sign language the same way, peripherally. I don’t see the detail of finger positions, but the rhythm and sweep catches what’s left of my eye. So watch Bill Evans’ hands on this YouTube clip of My Foolish Heart. Watch how he bows over the piano as if in prayer.

A friend of mine saw Bill Evans at Gilly’s in Dayton in 1980. Between sets he found Evans hunched sadly over a cup of coffee in the White Tower across the street. “Every one digs Bill Evans,” my friend said by way of salutation. “Yeah?” Evans said with a shrug that waved off further conversation. Several months later Evans was dead, burned out from a life of heroin and cocaine.

Café Mouffe Presents: Charles Mingus at Antibes

Finally, the whole enchilada! I’d seen YouTube snippets before, but now Interzone Music has posted 14:30 of this legendary performance of I’ll Remember April by the Charles Mingus Jazz Workshop. It was recorded at the Antibes Jazz Festival on July 12, 1960. That was two days after my fifth birthday. I was a beatnik poet prodigy then, and I knew all about the French Riviera. After listening to the Antibes live concert album for years, the naughty little boy in me wanted to see Brigitte Bardot and half her bikini in the background here. But hey, I’m not complaining. The film is jerky, the sound murky (listen to the CD to hear the ensemble’s full barbaric yawp), but this is an engaging historical document. It captures one of the last public appearances of that fragile bebop genius, Bud Powell. And it soars with Eric Dolphy and Booker Ervin trading four’s. Breathtaking!

For the record, the full lineup here is: Charles Mingus (bass), Bud Powell (piano), Eric Dolphy (alto), Booker Ervin (tenor), Ted Curson (trumpet), and Dannie Richmond (drums).

Thanks to Bemsha Bob in Seattle for pointing me to the possibility of finding Mingus/Antibes on YouTube. He’s turned me on to a lot of jazz over the years, and his pitch is perfect.

Coming next week to Café Mouffe: Bill Evans

Café Mouffe Encore: Bud Powell in Paris 1959

Bud Powell in Paris, December 1959: Get Happy. Dig Bud’s hands on the keys. Dig the Paris cellar ambiance. My kind of gig! This is a crisp noir clip with pretty good sound. That’s Kenny Clarke on drums and Pierre Michelot on bass. YouTube has 30 Bud Powell clips.

Café Mouffe Presents: Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra

You don’t have to go to New Orleans to second-line. As Sun Ra reveals, you can do it on Saturn. You can do it in Café Mouffe. In fact, we encourage it. At a predetermined point in this YouTube clip you’re going to want to get up from the computer and march around the room. Go ahead, it’s OK. Dance. Salute the universe.

David Sanborn introduces Sun Ra here. Sanborn almost trumps The Master when it comes to cosmic headgear -- and that’s his hair, circa 1990 when this version of Retrospect was recorded for the MTV show Night Music. He asks Sun Ra about his creative influences. Answer: “The planets.” Also featured here are solos by longtime Arkestra sidemen Marshall Allen (alto)), Michael Ray (trumpet), and John Gilmore (tenor). Allen leads the Arkestra now after The Master returned to Saturn in 1993. You get a glimpse of vocalist June Tyson but don’t hear her. This may be free jazz, but the parade finale takes me straight back to second-line dancing down Bourbon Street.

Sun Ra was “an intergalactic tone research scientist,” according to Michael Ray. That’s my kind of career aspiration. “Sun Ra said he would always hide his treasures in chaos… he told us to play the unrepeatable,” Ray adds. “If you can walk with Sun Ra on your shoulders, at least you’re walking in the right spot.”

Next week at Café Mouffe: Charles MIngus Jazz Workshop at Antibe

Sun Ra Encore: Space Is The Place

When George W. Bush announced his plans for spreading democracy and pre-emptive war to Mars back in 2003, I didn’t get nostalgic for John F. Kennedy and Captain Kirk. My yearning turned to Sun Ra. I suggested a theme song for the Bush Doctrine: Space Is The Place.

There are two YouTube clips that give you a taste of the Sun Ra classic, though neither reaches the musical scale of his original 1972 recording.

The first clip roars with a hypnotic baritone sax line. It appears to be bootlegged via cell phone camera from a live Arkestra performance. Not sure whether Sun Ra is present on the earthly plane for this one. The YouTube notes are in Japanese, courtesy of the Kyoto University Light Music Club. Light music? That’s the spirit!

The second clip is, well, metaphysical. You get snappy glimpses of Arkestra vocalist June Tyson and a sly feel for Sun Ra the Trickster.

Space Is the Place is a 1974 film documentary by director John Coney. YouTube offers snippet 1 and snippet 2, flashbacks with that 60s/70s trippy experimental movie feel. Remember Barbarella? Sun Ra invokes "music of the sun, music of the stars, music of yourself...vibrating...yes, you are music too, you are all instruments, everyone is supposed to be playing their part in this vast Arkestra of the cosmos"

Space Is The Place is also the title of John Szwed’s 1997 biography of Sun Ra. American Routes featured an interview with the author in 2003; check out the notes for the January 13 show for links to audio interviews with Szwed and Arkestra adepts Marshall Allen and Michael Ray.

Sun Ra has an impressive Wikipedia page. Another extensive source is Saturn Web. While The Master looks on from the astral plane, the Arkestra continues to gig here on earth.

Finally, a nod to poet Major Jackson, whose book Leaving Saturn launched my latest Sun Ra journey. I’ve written about one of Jackson’s poems in “A car, a girl, a community of believers” parts 1, 2, and 3. I need to write part 4 about the Sun Ra poems.

Lorraine Gordon at 84: Alive at the Village Vanguard

Lorraine Gordon, proprietress of theVillage Vanguard, just published a memoir at age 84. Alive at the Village Vanguard recounts a life in jazz stretching back to the 1930s. She married Alfred Lion and helped him run Blue Note Records in the 1940s. Then she married Max Gordon, owner of the Vanguard. Devoted to NYC leftie politics in the 1950s and 60s, she was a co-founder of Women’s Strike for Peace. When Max died in 1989 she took over day-to-day management of the Vanguard.

The room is considered by many to be the most venerable venue in jazz. More than 100 recordings have “Live at the Village Vanguard” in their titles. "The room really responds to some artists more than others," Gordon says. "The walls start to shake a little when there's no business and the room says forget it, the vibes aren't right. I listen to the room. The room tells me a lot."

NPR did a fine audio tribute to her. The web page features interview outtakes; MP3 downloads of jazz classics recorded at the Vanguard; a gallery of photos from the memoir, including this snapshot of Lorraine and Louis Armstrong taken in 1946; and a memoir excerpt describing the first time Lorraine heard Thelonious Monk:

Monk's room was right off the kitchen. It was a room out of Vincent Van Gogh somehow - you know, ascetic - a bed, a cot, really, against the wall, a window and an upright piano. That was it.

We all sat down on Monk's narrow bed — our legs straight out in front of us, like children. I looked up for a moment and saw a picture of Billie Holiday taped to the ceiling. The door closed. And Monk, his back to us, began to play.

He had enormous hands. Those hands almost stammered, it seemed to me, right above the keys. 'Where are they going to come down?' I kept wondering. It was just riveting to watch.

There were a lot of modern musicians I didn't understand — they were fast and terrific but not comprehensible to me, necessarily. Thelonious Monk I understood. Always. Monk was a revelation. From our very first encounter he was right in my groove.

He was always working on something new. That day we heard him composing what would turn out to be "Ruby, My Dear," one of Monk's most admired signature compositions. He didn't even have a title for it yet. I just loved the melody, so much so that I can remember thinking: 'Boy, I wish he'd name it after me - call it "Sweet Lorraine" or something.' Eventually, in the course of a later visit, Thelonious did tell me that he had titled this piece "Ruby, My Dear," and I said to him, "Oh, who's Ruby?" "No-one," Thelonious answered. "I just like the name."

Another Steve Lacy Encore

Oh, man! I’ll never get any work done today. Reflections is the Steve Lacy source in my jazz collection. It blows me away to think I was 3 years old when it was recorded in 1958. It was the first album of Thelonious Monk tunes recorded by someone other than Monk. Lacy, not Sidney Bechet, inspired John Coltrane’s experiments with soprano sax. The Monk connection points to that genealogy of influence, plus the connections of sidemen heard with both Lacy Sand Trane, pianist Mal Waldron and drummer Elvin Jones. Lacy discography

Café Mouffe: Steve Lacy Encore

Listened to Bye-Ya last night. The minimalist structure and feel of Lacy’s music has always appealed to me. This time I was impressed by his tones: loose, fluid, endlessly inventive in small, shifting steps. I heard tones that make me think of Ornette Coleman: no matter how avante garde, never far from some gritty blues.

Here are more Lacy clips on YouTube:

Lacy muses about the soprano sax’s tempermental sound. “The soprano is like the difficult child of the family.”

Recessional for Steve Lacy is a tribute to the saxophonist/composer by film maker Paul Adams featuring Paul Adams on vibes and Herb Bayley cornet. Haunting.

Guitarist Greg Malcolm plays Lacy’s Life on Its Way. Hypnotic.

Lacy joined the lineup for this Miles Davis & Gil Evans Big Band cut of Wait Till You See Her. In this clip it’s the soundtrack to a bucolic video montage of mountains and shore.

Introducing Café Mouffe: Steve Lacy in Paris

Sunrise hasn’t happened yet in Yellow Springs, but it’s already Friday afternoon somewhere. Somewhere like Rue Mouffetard in Paris. Friday afternoon means jazz. When I get home from work on Friday, what I want most is to walk down the street to a funky little jazz club with a piano trio, bistro cooking, a coterie of lounge lizards, and some amiable conversation. A place like the Village Vanguard in New York or Snug Harbor in New Orleans. My village doesn’t have that kind of club, so I have to imagine it. I’d call it Cafe Mouffe. I know I’m blending places here – a village in Ohio, Greenwich Village maybe, Faubourg Marigny, the ancient village of Lutecia on the Left Bank. But hey, it’s my imagination, isn’t it? I need all these places to conjure the ambiance I want.

This YouTube clip of Steve Lacy’s sextet in Paris does the same kind of blending and conjuring for me. Lacy is joined by his wife Irene Aebi on violin and vocals, Steve Potts on alto, Jean-Jacques Avenel on bass, Oliver Johnson on drums, and Bobby Few on piano. The composition is called “Prospectus.” We know all the details thanks to the dedicated lounge lizards who commented on the clip. That’s a virtual jazz club for you. That’s Café Mouffe.

Like a lot of American jazz musicians in the 1960s, Steve Lacy left New York for the expatriate jazz scene in Paris. I dreamed of going there to hear him. Never thought he’d come here. Eventually he started coming back to the States every year to gig around. To my unending astonishment, he came to Yellow Springs in 1997, performing in Kelly Hall with the trio featured on Bye-Ya. It wasn’t Friday afternoon but a wintry Tuesday night. My friend Bob Grubbs dragged me out, insisting it was something that could only happen once in a lifetime. He was right. Hearing Steve Lacy in my laid-back little village remains the most incredible musical experience I ever had.

Coming next Friday to Café Mouffe: Sun Ra and His Intergalactic Arkestra

See Mud? It’s Eric Dolphy Day!

Do they still celebrate Eric Dolphy in Syracuse, New York? Back in the 70s friends of mine at LeMoyne College cut classes and partied on the first winter day when enough snow melted so they could see mud again. They proclaimed this earliest harbinger of spring to be Eric Dolphy Day.

Listen to this YouTube clip of Eric’s solo performance of God Bless the Child and you’ll understand why. That bass clarinet sounds chthonic. Makes me want to wallow with the toads in some primordial ooze. Maybe by my back door. Get down, batrachians!

It isn’t exactly mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful yet, as e e cummings put it. But there’s enough moist, bare earth under foot to summon Eric’s spirit.

This is the debut of a weekly series of jazz clips that I’ll call Café Mouffe. Why the name? Tune in next Friday and I’ll explain.