Bloggo Jazzzzzz-o: Three Jazz Icons, la prima parte

Dottore Gianni has received a request – and he doesn’t often get requests, so he wants to try at least to honor this one!

One of the ONLY people, the good doctor is nearly certain, who reads his blog with any interest, his younger brother Tom, asked if he/I would write a bit about the classes I/he just finished at OLLI, connected to Furman University. Good golly! On OLLI? I pondered as I considered his flattering request. One of the two courses (on Russia: Pre- and Post-Glasnost) is out, as I attended only the first two of eight sessions, because the teacher was a fundamentalist, uninformed, hubristic crank. And that’s putting it nicely. In fact Dottore Gianni could go on and on about this Dick…that IS his name…but he won’t, as he doesn’t want to turn this into a diatribe.

But the other course (titled Jazz: Three Icons) was taught by an excellent teacher, and I regret that I had to miss just one session of the eight he offered. My brother is a professional musician, and has an intrinsic interest in the subject, so perhaps I can summarize what the class covered, and as usual add my own two (or more) bits to boot.

First, a little on the background of the teacher, George Kanzler. He is very self-effacing, so most of this comes from research. In the late 50s he went to college at NYU, while living just across the river in New Jersey. Afte classes he and his pals frequented jazz clubs and concerts. After college he

George Kanzler

joined the Peace Corps, was sent to Western Nigeria where he hosted a radio jazz show. From 1968 to 2002 he was jazz critic for the Star-Ledger, a widely-read Newark-based newspaper, and his column was also syndicated by the Newhouse News Service. After 2002 George continued (s) to write freelance, but retired to the Greenville SC area (he wrote an article titled “Bible Belt Jazz” for JazzTimes recently) and the upcountry should be glad to have him. I know I am!

Now, the subject of the course: Who are these three jazz “icons” anyway? The earliest of them is Jelly Roll Morton, who claims that he invented jazz – quite a claim to say the least. The second is Thelonious Monk, whose unique style on the piano makes him iconic, one of a kind. The last is Charles Mingus, one of the most daring and political innovators in the form. George never explained why he calls them icons, and in fact the term is interesting in the sense that they can be thought of iconoclastic.

Icons in their first and still I think primary incarnation are images of holy persons. Iconophiles approve of the use of icons, iconoclasts are against the use of icons. They want them put an end to and frequently literally destroy them. One religion can destroy the icons of another religion, and this has occurred throughout history, but there have been intra-religious struggles as well. Several variations on the latter theme have been enacted in the Christian faith, but perhaps the most obvious took place during the Reformation, when beautifully painted church walls were whitewashed, when images were taken down, when statues of the saints were beheaded.

But I think George was referring to these three jazz greats as icons in the sense of the secondary definition of the word, which means idol, model, exemplar. The three Ms (Morton, Monk and Mingus) were all iconoclasts, not in the sense of destroying images but of breaking the mold, challenging traditional jazz patterns and styles. Of course because they challenged the old by inventing bold musical innovations they could be classed as idols of jazz as well.

Words…interesting items, are they not?

George offered us samples of each of these artists in the first three classes, then later focused on Monk and Mingus, usually featuring one in the first 45 minutes of the 90 minute class, using the remainder of the class to focus on the other. He had an interesting way of proceeding. As often as not he played a piece of music made famous by one of our three icons, but played by a more recent ensemble. So it was in the very first moments of the first class, when George introduced Jelly Roll by playing one of his famous compositions, “The King Porter Stomp”, by Gil Evans in a 1959 gig, then by Benny Goodman in 1935, next by Fletcher Henderson in 1928, and finally by Morton himself, earlier in the 20s. He then proceeded to Monk and his most famous song, “Round Midnight”, playing not one of Monk’s recordings of it but instead playing Miles Davis’s famous take on it in 1956. George then played a version that Monk recorded a year later, in 1957, wherein he incorporated some of Miles’s style.

Dottore Gianni sidebar: This near solo by Monk (John Coltrane is heard briefly but only in the final stanzas of the piece) is definitive in the good doctor’s mind, as it seems to be searching for the next note, almost as if, years after Monk wrote and recorded the song he was sitting alone in a piano bar at around midnight, trying to compose a piece of music – lonely, soulful, haunting. You can hear it on the CD or MP3, Thelonious Himself

George finished his presentation on Monk that first day by jumping forward to a brilliant jazz vocal of “Round Midnight” by Sarah Vaughn, sung at Monterey in 1971.

And then on to Mingus, whose music George demonstrated in a slightly different fashion. Mingus was known for including spoken vocals in some of his pieces. George treated us to a very dark, depressing song called “The Clown,” in which a monologist, Gene Shepherd, told the sad story of the clown as Mingus and his band played behind the narrator, sometimes took over from the narrative, but always complemented the narration. He went on to play another Mingus piece played by a Mingus ensemble, “Bird Calls,” which was a tribute to Charlie (“Bird”) Parker. He ended the class by playing a rather bizarre big band treatment of the song, which began and ended with actual birds chirping!

A very cool first class, and if George’s approach to the material seemed somewhat peripatetic, it was actually marvelously controlled. However, if I continue by explaining each class as taught, this could turn into a long post (even by Dottore Gianni’s loquacious standard), so I think I’ll proceed by giving you some background on each composer, followed by some of what I learned from my excellent teacher on each of them.

Let’s begin with Jelly Roll Morton, or JRM! (I’ll refer to each of the musicians by their initials for the sake of brevity

Jelly Roll Morton

and my poor typing style.) JRM was born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe (1890-1941 in New Orleans. He was of Creole heritage or so he insisted. Throughout his life he deniedthat he was African-American. His parents separated and his mother married a man named Mouton, which JRM anglicized to Morton. How did he come by “Jelly Roll”? Dottore Gianni wants to tell you, but he also wants to keep you in suspense. More on this later! 

JRM was musically precocious and by the age of 14 was playing piano in brothels around New Orleans, which as he himself said was a “stomping ground for pianists.” When his grandmother found out where he was playing she kicked him out of the house!

Another Dottore Gianni Sidebar:  It is difficult to know what is true or not true about JRM. Much of what we know comes from a biography written by Alan Lomax, and also from the extensive interviews including music that Lomax taped with the musician for the Library of Congress. The problem is that JRM was a great storyteller, and was not above fabrication. He claimed for example that he “invented jazz” and while some critics scoff at this claim, one of them, Gunther Schuller agrees that his assertions were often “hyperbolic” there is “no proof to the contrary.” Schuller adds that his “considerable accomplishments in themselves provide reasonable substantiation.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly_Roll_Morton

In about 1904, per Wikipedia (around the time grandma gave him the boot) JRM began touring the South with minstrel shows, then in 1910 he toured in Chicago, then on to New York in the following year. While there he came across James P. Johnson and Willy "the Lion" Smith, future famous stride

pianists, Our teacher George sees the move from ragtime to stride as the period where jazz had its beginnings. In 1914 he settled in Chicago for three years. It was about this time that he began to write down his compositions. George claims that JRM is credited as the first jazz composer to do this, and also to write out parts for his band, sometimes even their solos. Among the songs written in this approximate period were “Jelly Roll Blues” and “King Porter Stomp”, which I discussed above.

One of JRM’s more interesting theories about jazz has to do with something he called “The Spanish Tinge”. Rather than flounder around attempting to explain this myself, I’ll let Jelly Roll do it, from the Library of Congress sessions with Lomax:

"Then we had Spanish people there. I heard a lot of Spanish tunes. I tried to play them in correct tempo, but I personally didn't believe they were perfected in the tempos. Now take the habanera “La Paloma”, which I transformed in New Orleans style. You leave the left hand just the same. The difference comes in the right hand — in the syncopation, which gives it an entirely different color that really changes the color from red to blue. Now in one of my earliest tunes, ‘New Orleans Blues’, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can't manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Tinge

In 1917 he moved to California with William Manuel Johnson’s band. His West Coast touring, which took him as far as Vancouver, was described by jazz historian Mark Miller as "an extended period of itinerancy as a pianist, vaudeville performer, gambler, hustler, and, as legend would have it, pimp." (Quoted in Wikipedia - se above -  as is most of the information I found on JRM, except where I note that our teacher George or some other source was used.)

In 1923 JRM returned to Chicago, where he wrote The Wolverine Blues and also began to record commercially. In class we heard three recordings of that blues, first played by Jack Teagarten and his Dixieland style big band in the 1950s, then by JRM with his band (see just below in this paragraph) and Bob Crosby's (yes, that's Bing's brother) band in the 1930s. Crosby's band was unique in that era in that it was the only band, according to George, to play traditional jazz in 2/4 time, a typical Dixieland tempo. In 1926 JRM was offered a contract from Victor, the largest and most prestigious recording company in the U.S. It was in Victor’s Chicago studios that Morton and his band The Red Hot Peppers, peppered with New Orleans jazz greats, grew famous for their classics of 1920s jazz. Two years later he married a showgirl named Mabel Bertrand and moved to New York where he continued to record for Victor.

Jelly Roll Morton and the Red Hot Peppers

But when the Depression hit in 1931 Victor did not renew his contract, and his glory days were over. As I noted above Fletcher Henderson, Benny Goodman and others recorded his music, but JRM got no royalties from these men. In 1935 he moved to Washington DC where he worked at a club known by various names, including The Music Box, at 1211 U Street in the Shaw neighborhood of the city. But he was unable to profit from this venture, primarily because the building’s owner let all her friends in for free and also gave them free drinks. In 1938 JRM was stabbed by a friend of the owner in the head and chest. As all too often happened in those days the white hospital to which he was taken refused to admit him, and when he was finally got to a black hospital he waited for hours with ice placed on his wounds before doctors attended to him. He never fully recovered and he died from the wounds in Los Angeles three years later.

However, it was in 1938 that Alan Lomax brought JRM to the Library of Congress for the sessions that would ensure his place in jazz history. What was his place? Major disagreements among critics and JRM’s contemporaries will probably never be solved. Wikipedia tells us that it was during the sessions with Lomax that JRM claimed he was born in 1885, because if he had given his proper age he would have proved to young to have “invented” jazz. He argued in the sessions with Lomax that pianist Buddy Bolden

Buddy Bolden - was HE first?

 played ragtime and not jazz, but the majority of Bolden’s fellow New Orleans musicians did not agree with JRM. Invent it or not, Jelly Roll Morton was a formidable figure in the early days of jazz, and a great influence on many later greats, including Charles Mingus. Per our teacher George, there was a great connection between the two musically. He noted that Mingus had a bundle of Morton’s tunes and handed them out to his band when they recorded Blues and Roots for Atlantic in 1959. We We heard a cut from that album called “My Jelly Roll Soul" – clearly an hommage to Jelly Roll Morton.

Dottore Gianni knowas a little about music, but a lot about theatre, and while in class he remembered the innovative musical Jelly's Last Jam, which told

 the story of his life via flashback from a sort of limbo in whch he found himself after his death. Written and directed by George C. Wolfe, it starred the great Greory Hines as old Jelly Roll and the remarkable Savion Glover as young Jelly Roll. It was a fair-sized hit, running for more than 500 performances and winning nine Tony Awards in 1993. It was unique in that its story-telling style was largely via tap dancing. Critic John Lahr (yes, he's related to Bert) noted that the musical "reclaims the gorgeous power of tap dancing as part of musical storytelling." 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jelly's_Last_Jam

Savion Glover (left) and Gregory Hines in Jelly's Last Jam

So much for Jelly Roll...no, wait! Dottore Gianni must tell you how Jelly Roll came to be called Jelly Roll. Wikipedia explains that while working in New Orleans brothels in his teens, “he often sang smutty lyrics; he took the nickname ‘Jelly Roll’, which was black slang for female genitalia.” A not implausible theory, and it is certainly true as to the slang meaning of the name, but there is a more colorful account told to Alan Lomax by JRM himself, which goes like this:

“Then there is the ‘true’ story of how Ferd Morton had the name Jelly Roll ‘thrown on me as an alias.’ He was in a vaudeville act in Chicago at the time, ad libbing comedy. Sammy Russell, his partner, said: ‘You don’t know who you’re talking to . . . I’m Sweet Papa Cream Puff, right out the bakery shop.’ ‘This seemed to get a laugh,’ so Morton ‘stated to him’ that he was ‘Sweet Papa Jelly Roll with stove-pipes in my hips, and all the women in town was dying to turn my damper down.’ In the background Allan (Alan) Lomax can be heard asking for an explanation of all this, and, rather condescendingly, the Sweet Papa tells him that stovepipes and dampers refer to heat — it meant he had ‘hot hips.’”
 doctorjazz.co.uk

We actually heard that story in class as George played us segments of the Library of Congress sessions, which became available in only 2005. Before that time it was thought that they were too racy for release. It’s a good story written down, don’t you think? But you haven’t lived until you’ve heard Jelly Roll tell it himself!

Stay tuned for another two posts, one of Monk, one on Mingus, and to all of you from Dottore Gianni, ciao tutti!