Nancy Wilson 1937-2018

On the heels of our tribute to Joe Williams, we now learn of the passing of vocalist Nancy Wilson at the age of 81. Nancy and Joe shared a number of parallel lines throughout their singing careers. They had a common manager in John Levy; they both recorded albums with Cannonball Adderley, George Shearing, and Count Basie; and both objected to being typecast as a certain style of vocalist. I was fortunate to sit with Nancy Wilson in November of 1995 for an interview, and she addressed the issue of stereotypes:

NW:   I have to say about jazz critics, they really gave me the pits for a while. They felt that the Cannonball Adderley album was a compromise for Cannon. Because I was a pop artist.

MR:   No kidding?

NW:   Oh, yes. You don’t know the stuff they did to us. But my point that I’ve always tried to stress is I came into this business with a gift, the voice is a given. It was a gift from God. I didn’t put any labels on it. I also decided to leave my home to do this, to be commercial. I mean the object of the game for me was why would I want to, why would anybody in their right mind want to give up their security, their home, all the things that mean happiness to me, to go out to only want to fulfill somebody else’s idea of who and what I am. I figured that I was going to do this on a major scale or I didn’t want to do it. Because I could go home, go to Carnegie Tech as opposed to Central State, and be a doctor or be something in medicine, and I’d have been fine. But the voice was always out front. But I have never apologized for being a commercial artist. That is why I do what I do, is to sell. I want to be heard, I want to reach as many people as I can. I believe in that mass thing. You know I want everybody to know who I am if I’m going to do it.

I recall being surprised to hear this recollection, as the Cannonball Adderley-Nancy Wilson LP is one of my absolute favorite recordings.

One thing Nancy did not have to deal with was performance anxiety. Again from her interview:

MR:   Can you recall as a child, were you always pretty comfortable in front of an audience? 

NW:   It never occurred to me that you should be nervous. When I found out I was so grown that it didn’t make any difference. Then I found out people actually get nauseous and tremble and shake. Well I don’t want to do this if I have to be sick before I go on. But some people do. Some people just feel that that’s a part of it. I like being relaxed. I like taking it in stride. I love it. I keep it in its proper perspective, and it allows me to continue to do it. As long as I do it this way I can do it.

Nancy was awarded three Grammys and was an NPR host for Jazz Profiles. She considered herself a storyteller, and she chose the songs in her repertoire based on their strong narrative element.

This interview was conducted early on in our oral history project, when I was still developing an interviewing style. I will always remember the dignity and class that was part of Nancy’s persona. You can view the complete video here.

Buster Cooper, 1929-2016

“Being in a band” usually means you’re part of a four, five, or six piece group. But during the Swing Era a band meant an organization of up to 20 people — saxophone, trumpet, and trombone sections supported by a rhythm section. The best of the bands, such as Basie, Ellington and Miller lasted beyond the big band years and provided employment for a significant number of musicians. Among them was George “Buster” Cooper, trombonist.

Buster was born in St. Petersburg, Florida on April 4, 1929 and passed on May 13, 2016. Like many working jazz musicians, he made a life on the bandstand and in the studios. He rose to the top of the big band world during his seven year stint with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

Buster was interviewed along with fellow Ellington alum Bill Berry in a 1995 interview for the Fillius Jazz Archive. They spoke about Duke Ellington, his persona and his special relationship with co-composer Billy Strayhorn:

Buster Cooper, in 1995

BC:  Well it seems to me like a perfect collaboration. And okay, Duke and Strayhorn was fantastic. I’ve seen Duke, he started tunes, he’d say, “Here, Stray, I can’t turn the corner now on this one. Fix this for me.” You can tell.

Bill Berry, in 1995

BB:  Or over the phone, “Strayhorn, I’m stuck here, you know with this, do something with it,” and the way the stories go I’m sure it’s true, is Strayhorn would send something out that was like perfect, like as though they were reading each other’s minds.

BC:  Exactly. Fantastic.

BB:  The perfect solution, you know. Also, Duke Ellington was the smartest, brightest person I’ve ever met. Period.

BC:  Exactly. I used to sit and watch him man and I’d try and figure him out, you know. I used to be looking at him and he wasn’t aware of watching or nothing like that because he didn’t even know what the time was. That didn’t mean nothing. Obviously he thought maybe that’d make you rush through the day, you understand what I’m saying? And I used to sit up on the bandstand and I’d just watch him you know. And I finally came to the conclusion one night. I said Duke Ellington knows who Duke is. Period. Believe me.

BB:  He’s the only one that knew.

BC:  Believe me. He knew what Duke was all about. Fantastic man. I’ve just seen people come into a room you know, after Duke would walk into this room right now, and it would be something like a halo right around him.

BB:  Yeah. The room lights up.

BC:  Really. It does.

BB:  There’s very few people like that. He was one of them.

BC:  He’d walk in this room and — boom — the whole room would go up.

BB:  Yes. I was at the White House for his 70th birthday. And there were like not only a bunch of great, world famous jazz musicians, but there was the President, the Vice President, the Cabinet, the Supreme Court and heaven knows who else. And the spotlight was on Ellington at all times. I mean you’d have sworn there was somebody following him around with a light, and there wasn’t. You know I mean this is in very fast company. You know the most powerful people in the country, in the world.

After Buster’s tenure with Ellington, he followed the familiar path for big band players and entered studio work in Los Angeles. As a sideline, he played with big bands led by Bill Berry, Frank Capp, and Nat Pierce. His nickname, “the bumble bee” apparently was derived from his ability to play at a furious tempo.

If you’ve read my blog in the past you may know that I’m an ardent fan of Cannonball and Nat Adderley. In Chris Sheridan’s book Dis Here, a Bio-Discography of Julian “Cannonball” Adderley, Buster has a brief but significant mention. According to Sheridan, in June of 1955 the Adderley brothers drove to New York City from Florida to test the waters with a professional career in jazz in mind. On their first night in the Big Apple, Nat’s friend and former band mate from the Lionel Hampton Orchestra, Buster Cooper, took them to the Café Bohemia in Greenwich Village. A band led by bassist Oscar Pettiford was in residence. Saxophonist Jerome Richardson was missing from the bandstand and Cannonball was invited to play a few tunes. For the Adderleys, the rest is history. So thank you Buster for your role in that fortuitous meeting.

Throughout Buster’s life he remained humble and acknowledged where he felt his talent came from:

BC:  Actually I don’t play the trombone. Okay, a supreme being plays the trombone through me. I am the instrument. You understand what I’m saying? So I mean I just put that clearly now, you understand what I’m saying?

Still the One

Cannonball Adderley

Everyone has a short list of memorable events, occurrences that make such an impression that we can recall exactly where we were when they happened. I was born in 1950, so my list includes the Kennedy assassination, the first landing on the moon, and the Beatles appearances on the “Ed Sullivan Show.” Also on my list is the date August 8, 1975. Forty years ago today, I was in my car outside Rome, New York when I heard the radio announce that Julian “Cannonball” Adderley had passed away.

I’ve written about Cannonball before, and he is still my all-time favorite jazz artist. As an up-and-coming saxophonist I was first influenced by the cool toned and somewhat dispassionate Paul Desmond, who became popular alongside Dave Brubeck. But Cannonball offered something else: a perfect balance of technique, tone, and passionate delivery. The fact that he was an engaging speaker and invited the listener into the music was a big plus.

I was so into Cannonball’s recordings that I noticed when he switched saxophones, from a King Super 20 to the more iconic Selmer. I was not the only fan who noticed. During my interview with Charles McPherson, a major player in the world of jazz saxophone, we discussed this change.

MR:   Can we get a shot of you holding your horn? I’m trying to recognize what kind of horn it is.

Charles McPherson

CM:   It’s a King. Most people play a Selmer, and this is a King Super 20.

MR:   Yeah. Cannonball used to play it.

CM:   Yeah Cannonball and Bird. Yeah. And it’s a very nice horn, it’s very human-like. Very much like the human voice.

MR:   It’s interesting you say that because when I hear your tone — actually the thing that attracts me to a player is the tone first. And I hear that in your sound. And I noticed when Cannonball switched from King to Selmer that I was disappointed.

CM:   Unbelievable. I mean I know that. But I’m surprised that — well you said you play saxophone.

MR:   Yeah, but I heard it.

CM:   Isn’t that something, because I did too. And so you really do know. Because that’s a subtle thing, but it is a difference. And I remember it as a CD or record, whatever, where he did play Selmer for a while. And it was great, and it’s still great ‘cause he’s great. And I remember that oh this is great, but it doesn’t have that pop or that warmth either. And the Selmer is a great horn, and he sounded great on it. But this King, it was just something about that that, I don’t know just Cannonball sounded great on this. And Charlie Parker sounded great on this horn. I’ve heard other people on this horn that don’t sound so great, and I hope I’m not one of them.

I’d like to take a brief look at three recordings that personified the Cannonball Adderley legacy.

Cannonball burst into the New York jazz scene in the mid-1950s and his 1957 recording of the uptempo “Spectacular” demonstrated his mastery of the demanding and sometimes frantic bop style. He had so absorbed the language of Charlie Parker that the critics jumped on the bandwagon and hailed him as the new Bird. “Spectacular” is an impressive display of technique and chordal-based improvisation.

Ten years later Cannonball and his quintet had progressed into a style that critics called “soul jazz.” From the album “Mercy Mercy Mercy,” “Sticks” provides a striking example of Cannonball in full blues/gospel/soul mode. “The Sticks” is a 12-bar blues with an ear-catching melody. Brother Nat plays three exciting choruses; near the end of his third he engages in some stuttering double-tonguing. Cannonball, always aware of his musical surroundings, jumps on Nat’s phrasing at 1:27, roaring into a solo that has the live audience completely in his corner.

One year later, again in a live situation, Cannonball displayed his masterful approach to a ballad. The song “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” provided him with a highly expressive vehicle and his huge tone filled the room. If you listen to Cannon’s voice at the end of the song, it sounds like he actually choked himself up with the intensity of the song.

Drummer Roy McCurdy spent twelve years with Cannonball and spoke enthusiastically about his experience. Here he speaks of a unique method for keeping in sync with the brothers:

Roy McCurdy

RM:   Did you ever see Cannon and Nat live?

MR:   Oh, yeah.

RM:   They were really funny to me, because I was behind them all the time, looking at them. And this brother was short and Cannon was tall. And they had a way of snapping their fingers and moving, and their behinds were both in sync you know. And they would be snapping and the behinds would be in sync.

MR:   It’s almost as if you guys were creating a style as you went along.

RM:   Yeah. It was.

MR:   Did you have a name for it or did you let other people name it?

RM:   We just let other people name it. It was just music for us you know. We didn’t want to be in one particular slot all the time, like just straight ahead jazz or something. We wanted to be able to do all kinds of things and have some fun. And not only did we do funk and soul and Gospel and jazz, we also experimented with different time figures and things too at that time. Like 7/4 time, 5/4 time and things like that. We did “Seventy-four Miles Away.” That album was 7/4 time.

Vocalist Nancy Wilson credits Cannonball with jumpstarting her career, and during our interview I told her of my enthrallment with one of her early albums, “Nancy Wilson/Cannonball Adderley.” Oddly enough, the critics were not kind to this recording.

MR:   This particular album, I can’t imagine anybody saying anything bad about it.

Nancy Wilson

NW:   Oh it was the fact that Cannonball Adderley had kind of stepped out of the jazz thing, into the pop. Because this was a huge across the board album. It was not just a jazz album. “The Masquerade Is Over,” “Sleeping Bee,” these songs just popped out everywhere. And that was the good thing about radio in those days and music is that the focus wasn’t so narrow then. We were able to play concert venues, Carnegie Hall where we were also able to go into, the south side of Chicago and play The Southerland. So you could do so many more things then than you can today. The labels kind of keep you out of places. Whereas before we tried to broaden the scope. I believe that Cannonball Adderley took jazz out of the sawdust and he was one of the more commercial jazz artists. And he made his audience understand what he was doing.

It’s hard to say what Cannonball Adderley would be doing with his musical career if he had lived. Other artists, such as Benny Carter and Milt Hinton remained productive into their eighties and nineties. The avante garde saxophonist Kidd Jordan offered his opinion on what Cannonball’s music might have evolved into, and gave us a bit of insight into his personality:

Kidd Jordan

KJ:   Cannonball was one of my favorite players too. And look, changes didn’t mean nothing to him, you know that huh? Cannonball was playing by ear. I mean he could hear changes like that, and that’s why he went and locked in all them patterns that people was playing. Well you know Cannonball, and he sounded like a first alto player, that was another thing.

MR:   That’s for sure.

KJ:   That’s right. Cannonball could lead us saxes man. I listened to that Cannonball and they’re talking about first alto players, as a soloist he’s got the same thing that all those first alto players had. You know? And changes didn’t mean nothing. Believe me. Cannonball could play through ‘cause he could hear ‘em. Now that’s a case that that’s a complete musician. And look, before he died he told me he said, “Kidd, you know what? I’m going to play some of that crazy stuff, you see the next album I do? I’m gonna do some of the crazy stuff you’re doing.” But he died before that. Now that would have been something.

MR:   What kind of guy was he?

KJ:   Oh easy, happy-go-lucky, I mean one of the most beautiful cats I ever knew. And I got — he and Alvin Batiste was great friends. And me and Alvin was brother-in-laws you know, we’ve been brother-in-laws for 50 years now, so every time Cannon would come in they’d be cooking gumbo and all, and it would be party time when he’d come to town.

I know I’ll spend this weekend listening to some of my favorite Cannonball from the LPs that I saved my money for back in the early 60s. You can read our previous blog on Cannonball entitled, “Mercy Mercy” from May of 2009.

Orrin Keepnews, 1923-2015

Orrin Keepnews, in 2002

In my 20 years as Director of the Fillius Jazz Archive I have learned of the interconnectedness in the jazz world. It seems there are only one or two degrees of separation between jazz artists and the circle of producers, record executives, journalists and fans that surround the musicians. Orrin Keepnews, record producer and co-owner of Riverside Records, signed Cannonball Adderley to his label. Cannonball employed pianist Junior Mance early in his career. The liner notes to Junior’s LP entitled “Harlem Lullaby” were written by Orrin Keepnews. This record was produced by Joel Dorn, who released Cannonball Adderley live dates on Hyena records as well as archival recordings by Joe Williams. This is the same Joe Williams who sang the lead role in Cannonball Adderley’s musical “Big Man,” released on Fantasy records. Fantasy Records hired Orrin Keepnews in 1972 as Director of Jazz Productions and to oversee reissues of recordings from Riverside Records. And so it goes.

We regularly note the passing of jazz artists who are in their 80s and 90s, and the people who produced them have also reached these golden years. Orrin is recognized as one of the most important producers, writers, and record company owners in the history of jazz, and is responsible for numerous recordings by Bill Evans, Wes Montgomery, Thelonious Monk, and Cannonball Adderley. He described the role of a producer as he saw it, in our interview recorded in San Francisco in 2002:

MR:    I want to congratulate you on the contribution you’ve made to the art form called jazz. It’s really quite amazing the things you’ve been involved in and the careers that you have helped.

OK:    Well I must admit that I look back on it with a good deal of satisfaction. I’ve been very fortunate because in this business in particular, a lot of the associations that you form, at least initially, are accidental as hell. If someone tells me that I have been helpful to this or that career, that’s exactly the thing that I want to hear because I have always looked on the role of the producer in a very specific way. Now one of the hardest things, and I’ve been at it, I’m getting perilously close to my fiftieth anniversary in this business, but I still have to pause usually when I’m asked to make some kind of definition of what it is I do. Because for better or worse, I don’t know about other things because I’ve only done this really, but jazz record producers do a little bit of everything, as there is always a shortage of personnel, and to me the most important role is what I have taken to repetitiously referring to as being a catalytic agent. That I am supposed to create the circumstances under which the artist can work most effectively. I’ve finally got it boiled down to that one mantra and that’s what I am, that’s what I do. That statement is generally true, but the details of its implementation are constantly changing. There are almost literally no two artists who can be dealt with in the same way. There are perhaps no two record dates that can be dealt with in the same way. That may be pushing it a little bit, but fundamentally that to me is what the continuing challenge is all about. That’s why I didn’t get bored a long time ago with doing this. My job was to do two things. One is to appreciate and the other is to facilitate. And I usually don’t use such glorious words to describe it, but I’ve always been the guy that was able to get it done, which kind of surprises me sometimes. I don’t think of myself as being firm, as being decision-maker, I certainly do not believe in the auteur theory of jazz direction. I don’t think, and there have been people, and we won’t bother to name names, but there have been other jazz record producers who clearly do think of themselves as king makers. And I never did. It just got to be the point of hey, somebody’s got to make the decision and okay, that’s one of the things that I’m here for. Sometimes you might make decisions because nobody else is even in the position to even be aware of the need for a decision.

Like many men of his generation, Orrin served in the military during the World War II years. I found his recollections to be of particular interest:

MR:    Let me go backwards just a little bit. You were in the South Pacific.

OK:    I was on Guam. I was a navigator radar operator on B-29s. I did a lot of dropping of bombs on Japan, which I’m resolutely not proud of for the rest of my life.

MR:    At that time you were 23?

OK:    22 maybe, around in there.

MR:    How did you feel about it at the time?

OK:    At the time you didn’t feel about it. I mean I’m no great expert on it but there were two years in my life where I was involved in armed conflict and I think that one of the ways in which some of us emotionally survive was a form of anesthetizing yourself. You did not think about what you were doing. I don’t think, unfortunately at the end of the war, after the war was over, I flew a couple of missions where we were taking a batch of generals up to evaluate what had been done to Tokyo. So we flew in the daytime at pretty low levels over Tokyo, which is something I had never done before, and I was able to see Tokyo. I’ll take a lot of credit for the fact that Tokyo was a modern city that is almost entirely a post-war city. It looked to me to be about 50 percent burned out, I mean put it that way. And that was the first time, the shock of that hit me. Not to turn this into too much of a war memoir but basically between IM flights we didn’t do very much daytime formation bombing which involved demolition bombs. We normally did night flights where you just flew in a single file so basically you were following at a decent interval the plane ahead of you and we were dropping incendiary bombs so that what you did was it was a very lazy form of bombing, you just dropped on the fires that were in front of you. And if the first guy had been way off target, we all were because nobody did anything else but that. But the whole point there was that you could be very detached. You didn’t have to force yourself to think that you really were causing fires to happen in a large metropolitan city that was there. And you could block that out pretty good because hey, you had no alternative. This is what you were doing in the great war and I’ve long since given up figuring out whether this was, in many respects, a good or a bad thing. However, at this time of year as we get around the middle of August every year I am forced to think that in my personal opinion the damn atom bomb never should have been dropped. And let’s not get into the aesthetics or morality of that, but you have led me to this point in time so I make that statement. But you blot it out, the implications of what you were doing, I think because it was pretty necessary.

MR:    Right. Were the Japanese putting up a defense against your planes at that time?

OK:    In a lot of stages no. There was always a fair amount of antiaircraft fire but there were virtually no fighter planes. I mean the Japanese Air Force was pretty much shot to hell in the last months of the war which is the time I was primarily there.

Orrin saw the proliferation of jazz education programs and the advance of audio technology in an informative light:

MR:    Jazz has been elevated to a high state of art these days. Do you think it’s been positive for jazz?

OK:    That’s a hard question to answer. I do feel that when I have attended the last few jazz educators conventions I used to frown on jazz education because those God damn stage band so-called which were nothing but tired old big band charts and there were important things like the fact that if it wasn’t for North Texas State how would Woody Herman ever get new players for his band, all those clichés of the past. But the fact is I think that to some degree jazz education has done a wonderful job, it has progressed, there are people learning things on stages of the game where people never were learning before. As long as you recognize there is only one of a series of tools and it is by no means the only way to go. So that I would say on the whole, hey, if you asked me did I think that multi-track recordings was a positive or a negative experience I’d say pretty much the same thing. If you keep it under control it’s just fine. If you use it, if you don’t let it use you, if you use the fact of jazz education, the proliferation of it in so many places, if you use that to the purposes of making good jazz it’s fine. But don’t let it run away with you. I feel that way about technical progress. I mean I love digital recording. I have always been of several minds about multi-track for just that reason, I don’t want the bass player to be able to punch in the right notes, I want it to be important what notes they were playing when they were listening to him while they were playing. So that makes me an anachronism in some ways I know. But so be it.

Orrin passed away on March 1, one day shy of his 92^nd birthday. The jazz world was fortunate to have had him as an integral force for over six decades.

Ironic Iconic Hits

So how do you write a hit song? You can find books and blogs that profess to have the secret. There have been songwriting teams called “hit makers,” and it’s safe to say there are certain formulas that increase the chance of a song becoming a hit. In the jazz world some of the most successful recordings have come about through a combination of serendipity and a large dose of irony. One reason I call them “ironic hits” is that the musicians who made them famous were not the writers of the tune, although they were composers themselves. Let’s take a look at three.

Duke Ellington, arguably America’s greatest composer, was a well-established bandleader and hit maker in 1940. Ellington was a member of ASCAP (the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) and when the organization raised its licensing fees, Duke found he could no longer perform his own compositions during live radio broadcasts. This happened shortly after he had hired composer and pianist Billy Strayhorn. Strayhorn brought an arrangement to the band called “Take the A Train.” Jazz lore has it that the title came from the first line of Ellington’s directions that would lead Strayhorn from his Pittsburgh home to Ellington’s apartment in Harlem. Take the A Train. Duke’s son Mercer Ellington, also an arranger, stated that he found Strayhorn’s original draft for the song in the trash. Strayhorn stated that it was too similar to a Fletcher Henderson arrangement, and so had discarded it. Whether or not that is true, it’s fascinating to realize that one of Ellington’s most enduring songs was not his composition at all. Ellington had the good sense to embrace talent when he found it, and he replaced his then current band theme, “Sepia Panorama” with Strayhorn’s first effort. The fact that Duke’s new collaborator was not an ASCAP member solved the licensing issue for a time.

A measure of a hit is not only the impact it first makes, but how long it lasts. “Take the A Train” is now a standard at jam sessions and any swing affair. Like most instrumental hits, lyrics were added later, in this case by vocalist Joya Sherrill, who later became a singer with Ellington. Joya’s lyrics hold up fairly well and are essentially an early Google Map: “You must take the A train/To go to Sugar Hill way up in Harlem.”

Amongst Ellington’s most ardent admirers was composer and pianist Dave Brubeck. When Brubeck was chosen to be on the cover of Time magazine, he unequivocally stated “it should have been Ellington.” The song “Take Five” has somehow entered the consciousness of the general population and provides another fascinating story of odd circumstances and irony. One of the first things I noticed after being hooked on the song and purchasing the LP was that the composer was the group’s saxophonist, Paul Desmond. As a devourer of liner notes and music trivia, this fact was not lost on me. Brubeck, whose success was tied to his writing, was not credited for what became the band’s biggest hit, and indeed went on to become the largest selling jazz single in history. The story is slightly more complicated. Apparently drummer Joe Morello was often given an extended solo feature at the end of their concerts in the early sixties. Often he would transition into the rarely-played time signature of 5/4, and eventually suggested to Dave that perhaps a song should be written over this groove. Paul Desmond stepped up and said “I’ll write something.” According to an NPR interview, Brubeck stated that Paul came back with two seemingly unrelated saxophone melodies to fit over the 5/4 time signature. Brubeck formed them into an A-A-B-A structure and provided the ear-catching vamp. The irony continues. It is a Brubeck hit without a hint of a piano solo, and features two other members of the group. Desmond thought the song was a throwaway and joked that his royalties would allow him to buy a new electric shaver. He also didn’t like the title “Take Five” suggested by Brubeck. In addition, Columbia Records was not pleased with the album as a whole. In her interview in 2011, Iola Brubeck reminisced about the attitude of the record company:

MR:    Were you surprised at the success of “Time Out?”

IB:     Of “Time Out?” Well yes. There was no anticipation that it was going to be a hit of any kind. And in fact, it’s an old story now that Dave has often told of having to fight at Columbia to even have it released and Goddard Lieberson liked the concept and he said he thought he could sell it to the people on the west coast maybe, and he took “Take Five” and went out to sales meeting on the west coast, saying this is something new and I think we can really push this, and the sales people saying “no way.” So it really was a result of — God bless ‘em — disc jockeys who were looking for something different to play and saying well this sounds different and then putting it on and then it got a public reaction, and then it started taking off. So it was really the public deciding that this is what they wanted to hear. It broke the mold and that’s always a little challenging to a lot of people who don’t know how to handle it. And of course by this time — it’s notorious in jazz history lore — that terrible review that Downbeat gave “Time Out.” I think it got a star and a half or something.

Thanks to the unique quirkiness of the song and those DJ’s, “Take Five” took its place in music history. The record company put out a 45 RPM single which required some snipping of the drum solo to fit into the three minute format. “Take Five,” has certainly stood the test of time and has since been lyricized by Al Jarreau, “Won’t you stop and take a little time out with me/Just take five, just take five.”

When Billboard released their 1961 Top 100 chart, “Take Five” stood at #95, preceded at #94 by Chubby Checker’s “Let’s Twist Again,” and followed by Elvis Pressley’s “Are You Lonesome Tonight” at #96. You’ll never see that in this day and age. Imagine a Wynton Marsalis recording on the charts, sandwiched between Justin Bieber and Adele.

I’ve stated numerous times that Cannonball Adderley was my musical hero. Not only was he the quintessential alto saxophonist, but also a savvy bandleader and major contributor to the soul jazz movement. In February of 1967, the Cannonball Adderley Quintet landed at #11 on the Billboard charts with the song “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.” Cannonball wrote the occasional tune, but it was brother Nat who had penned some of the previous successes. In this case the liner notes conveyed that this Gospel-tinged song, steeped in American soul, was written by an Austrian. Pianist Joe Zawinul was born in Vienna and spent ten years as a member of Adderley’s quintet, contributing many compositions to the band’s repertoire, none bigger than “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy.”

Musicians don’t usually know when they have a hit on their hands, but Cannonball’s drummer Roy McCurdy stated in his interview that they thought they had something with potential.

MR:    With tunes like “Mercy, Mercy” and stuff, when you read them in rehearsal, did you get a sense that this tune is going to sell a lot of records?

RM:    Yeah. You know we were hoping, we were always experimenting. That band was experimenting all the time. And we played straight ahead jazz, we played all kinds of stuff. So when Joe [Zawinul] brought that tune in I think we were rehearsing in Teaneck, New Jersey. We rehearsed in Nat Adderley’s basement out there. When he brought that tune in he says “listen to this,” and he started playing it. And we were just starting to get into the electronics you know, where we were using electric piano. And we had a Wurlitzer that we wanted to use. And he played this tune and we says, “yeah, let’s try it.” We rehearsed it and got it together. We went and tried it and people loved it.

Perhaps the atypical characteristics of “Mercy, Mercy” are what propelled it to that unlikely spot on the charts. The song is unlike a hard-swinging Adderley performance. The slow groove is intimate but not overwhelming. The melody is simple but builds powerfully to its climax. There are no solos by Cannonball on saxophone nor brother Nat on cornet anywhere in the song. The only improvising was provided by Joe Zawinul on the Wurlitzer, and even this solo relies mostly on spare Gospel-flavored fills, as if to say the groove is sufficient. The song clocked in at close to five minutes, but as they did in “Take Five,” the record company needed to edit it for the 45 RPM. The engaging verbal introduction offered by Cannonball (“sometimes we’re not prepared for adversity”) was snipped out for the short version. Listen to the LP version to enjoy Cannonball’s eloquence.

Even the recording of the song had some jazz lore to it. The album is titled “Live at ‘The Club,’” when in reality “the club” was actually a recording studio. Invited guests sat at tables around the band recreating the atmosphere of a live performance. You can hear it and feel it on the record.

“Mercy, Mercy” lives on, although not as “Take Five” or “Take the A Train” did. The song was recorded by various artists in a number of settings, including the Buddy Rich Big Band. Somehow “Mercy” did not lend itself to memorable lyrics. The pop group The Buckinghams put out a cover version almost immediately, singing, “My baby she’s made out of love/Like one of the those bunnies in a Playboy Club.” Years later a set of lyrics that was only slightly better was penned, oddly credited to both Curtis Mayfield and songwriters Gail and Vincent Levy, “My love has turned her back on me/Heartache, why won’t you let me be?” Personally, I’ll stick with the instrumental version.

Joe Zawinul’s hit writing was not a onetime event. He penned memorable follow-ups for the Adderley band with “Walk Tall” and “Country Preacher,” and years later wrote the marvelous ear-catching composition “Birdland” as leader of the band Weather Report.

Regarding hit songs, Fats Waller’s famous phrase applies: “One never knows, do one.”

Dynamics Make it Interesting

A Bruce Springsteen quote: “I’m driving in my car/I turn on the radio.” The car radio gave me the impetus for my first blog about memorable music moments, and serves as a second inspiration for more. This time the focus is on dynamics. One of the definitions in Webster’s New World Dictionary defines dynamics as “relating to or tending toward change.” Then down the list, “the effect of varying degrees of loudness and softness in the performance of music.” Music students learn the basics of soft (p) and loud (f), as well as the gradual crescendos and decrescendos between them.

Back to the car. I was listening to the oldies station and was forced to another station by a song I couldn’t stand, and landed on the classical station. The DJ announced the mother of all classical pieces: “Beethoven’s Fifth.” How can you turn the channel from “Beethoven’s Fifth?” But how many of you have had the experience of listening to classical music in the car? More often than not it is a frustrating experience. Now you hear it, now you don’t. The obvious reason is the use of dynamics. Pop music rarely takes advantage of the effect of dynamics, unless it’s loud, louder, loudest. In fact if you’ve had studio experience, you know that the final mix on a pop song has the dB meter riding consistently just below the red. It’s a different story with instrumental classical music, where a huge part of the effect of a piece is the use of dynamics.

Let’s take a look at Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony, in particular the First Movement. Everyone can hum the four note figure in their head, and Beethoven milks it for all it’s worth, loud and intense. At about 1:09, he pulls back and decreases the volume and emotion, only to build up again. In this particular clip we hear some terrific use of dynamics, in the beginning, and also at about 2:46, where we experience the masterful use of crescendos and decrescendos throughout the First Movement. Watch Toscanini as he makes sure that the French horn lick at 4:50 is appropriately soft. It’s also interesting to note that Maestro Toscanini had memorized all of Beethoven’s dynamics and needed no score. It all works because this is concert hall music. People are being as quiet as possible, and no road noise intrudes.

Though separated by a century, setting, instrumentation and an ocean, Count Basie displayed the same skill as Beethoven in the use of dynamic extremes to create excitement in his work. With acoustic music, the most obvious way to increase the volume of a band is to have more people play, with varying degrees of intensity. Look at this version of the Count Basie Orchestra and their arrangement of “All of Me.” This is classic Basie. The piece starts with just the rhythm section, Freddie Green chomping away on the guitar, and Basie handling the melody in the most subtle fashion. Just before the halfway point, at measure 15 and 16 (1:07), all the brass and saxes slyly pick up their horns and lay into a three-note figure that takes the dynamics of the band from double piano (pp) to triple forte (fff). Perhaps some of you have had the experience of hearing the Basie band play this chart. I heard it backstage at a concert and it scared the life out of me. Listen to the audience. They applaud the dynamics! It’s a great moment. And of course, it’s followed by a return to that subtle chunking rhythm, a driving force with minimal volume.

Jerry Dodgion

Saxophonist Jerry Dodgion is most associated with the Thad Jones-Mel Lewis Orchestra, but in our interview from 1996 he cited his brief time with the Count Basie Band as thrilling and unforgettable. Jerry spoke of the unique ability of the band to play at both ends of the dynamic spectrum and still swing.

MR:   Did you get a chance again to record with [Basie]?

JD:   Yes, several years later. I didn’t even know it was with Count Basie which was good because I would have probably been nervous. I got a call for three days of recording with Chico O’Farrill on the answering service. And I showed up and it was Count Basie’s band. I’m looking around and I said am I in the right studio? So then I see Chico and I says I guess so. I mean that was really great. That was a lot of fun too. That was an album called “Basic Basie.” And I even played a few solos on that, which I was a little apprehensive about. I mean Lockjaw was on that too and he made that great recording of “Bewitched” on one of those dates. It was really wonderful to see this and be in there and be part of it happening. Because I loved the music so much and heard it on records so much, and heard the band in person. I heard the band in person a lot. And that band, the band of the ‘50s and ‘60s was an unbelievable ensemble band. Maybe it was really one of the best ever. They could play with the great swinging and feeling and the emotion and everything. But together. And the ensemble was just so together it was just thrilling. And the dynamics, unbelievable. I mean they could play softer than we’re talking now, the whole band. And you’d still hear the bass with no amplifier. Frank Wess would play the flute, Thad did some things with flute and bass, and you could hear him. Now I don’t know — when the amplification came in it changed everything, you know? The bass became louder than the band and you could not hear the flute unless you turned up the mic and when the flute player turns up his mic then the bass player turns up his mic and then there’s the guitar player, forget it. And here were — and there’s no end to this stuff. But the real sensitive part of playing acoustically, that band just was the best ever. I just, I couldn’t believe it.

Is there anything softer than triple pianissimo (ppp)? The only answer is silence. A rarely used effect in music is the total absence of sound. Two of my favorite musicians knew about it. Cannonball Adderley and Joe Zawinul had a productive working relationship from 1961-1970. Joe wrote many of Cannonball’s most notable pieces. Here’s an example from a live recording in Chicago. The “Country Preacher” Cannonball refers to is a young Reverend Jesse Jackson. Joe Zawinul composed the song and it starts in a meandering fashion with his electric piano lick followed by some Cannonball ruminations on the soprano sax. The band kicks into higher gear, reaching a crescendo at 2:23, ending with a snare drum whack by Roy McCurdy. What can follow that? How about three or four seconds of absolute silence, and then the most subtle entrance possible? Effective? Check out the crowd. They went crazy for the silence. That’s dynamic.

In a similar fashion, Samuel Barber, composer of the work “Adagio for Strings,” may have found himself in a musical quandary. Most people have heard all or part of this piece, as it has been broadcast at solemn occasions and notably employed in the Vietnam movie “Platoon.” This piece existed on its own for years and was first written as a string quartet. It is a marvelous example of the use of dynamics. No winds. No percussion. It’s simply a string orchestra at an imperceptible tempo, building and building, slowly stepping from one dynamic level to the next with rich harmonies. Barber’s composition climbs through seven highly emotional minutes, challenging the listener to stay engaged. Finally it builds to the point where you’re pleading for it to stop. And stop it does. What could possibly follow this heart-wrenching crescendo? Nothing but silence. A good three to five seconds of absolute silence is followed by a cautious reentry of the strings, allowing you to breathe again. This piece is not served well through your computer, so please plug it into your stereo system. Or, find a recording, turn out the lights, get rid of the video, and be absorbed by this piece.

Manny Albam

Arranger Manny Albam was interviewed in October of 1998. His work encompassed writing in the fields of jazz, popular music and classical orchestration. He spoke about dynamics and the potential power they have over audiences:

MA:   Subtleties work if you begin to manipulate the orchestra. And that is orchestration. And that is what dynamics in orchestration do[es] for the audience. You suddenly realize wow, they’re doing something I can’t quite hear, I’d better pay attention. That’s part of audience manipulation. I did things orchestrated on Broadway, not too much. I used to help other people and then I got my own thing to do. And I worked with George Abbott, Mr. Broadway, a great director and all that. And I wrote this great arrangement for one of the singers in the show and he called me over and he said “we don’t want applause at the end of that.” I said “no?” He said “no, we want that to dwindle off into the next scene and to be a smooth thing that will go right into the next scene.” And I learned something about that. They don’t want applause. If you want to bring the audience to their feet you write these big chords and the rhythm section and everybody’s wailing away, and the audience will go “hey! yeah!” and get up, “encore! encore!” You know, the show stopper. But these things are for dramatic changes that happen. No applause. I had to re-write the whole last twelve bars of the thing to bring it all down to nothing and then the whole thing would swing into place. Now once you learn things like that from other venues, in other words this is drama, this has nothing to do with music, but music has got a lot to do with drama anyway.

Dynamics leads to drama.

When Less Equals More

The music I love has always had to pass the good groove test. In the mid-60’s I had my AM radio next to my ear waiting for songs like “Green Onions,” “I Feel Good (I Got You)” and Doris Troy’s “Just One Look,” songs that had killer grooves. I was also fascinated by well crafted arrangements that employed the layering of parts and the skillful use of horns and strings. When my listening expanded to jazz, it was the economical swing of Count Basie or the melodic improvisation of Paul Desmond that pulled me in. Recordings with torrents of notes played by emotional instrumentalists were rarely found on my record shelf.

I recall a friend telling me to listen to John Coltrane. I bought an LP called “Om” having no idea what to expect. It started out with the chanting of “Om,” followed by avante garde, cacophonous screaming on the saxophone accompanied by gongs and cymbals. It was not music I cared for at all, and I’m surprised I ever bought another Coltrane record. Even when I did, his playing demonstrated the virtuosic (typical was his classic “Giant Steps” where he plays page after page of running the chords); or the intense and extended soul searching. There is no doubt it was important music, but it didn’t appeal to me. While my sax hero Cannonball Adderley could play ferociously fast, the albums I liked best were from his middle period in the sixties, where he was playing soul jazz with their ear-catching melodies and formative funk. Even though he typically only had two horns, they meshed perfectly in the arrangements written by his brother Nat and Joe Zawinul. Those things appealed to me, along with Cannon’s great tone and soulful approach. People compare his playing to a Gospel preacher delivering a sermon, and he did have a highly vocal approach to his improvising. When I started playing, I didn’t recognize this concept until I started working with guys who played as if soloing is a competitive sport. At first I was enraptured by this type of playing. Later I came to think of it as an exercise in self-indulgence; too much information for a listener to comprehend. This type of player often likes to surround himself with musicians who play the same way, so a quartet results with too much information times four. It makes the listener (or at least this listener) want to wave a white flag.

On the other hand, some players are capable of playing a ton of music if they want to, but they choose their moments. I find that the better your rhythm section, the more likely you can afford to play less, and be able to choose your moments. If the rhythm players lay down a sparse but tight groove, the soloist can play more melodically instead of just running the changes. For me, playing with a well oiled rhythm section is the Holy Grail because I don’t feel I have an overabundance of technique on any of my instruments. I love to play melodic phrases— licks that can be whistled or sung back to you. If I’m playing with people who are fighting each other for dominance, I feel I have to join the fray and start playing a whole bunch of notes in an attempt to fit in on the bandstand. I am not someone who cares to or is even capable of doing that. Jon Hendricks related a story about Count Basie’s interview with a British reporter. The reporter asked Basie why he chose to play so economically. Basie replied “that’s all I can play.” It’s really true. If you can find people who complement the way you play, that’s the way to go.

My first real experience in a big band, and an important period of growth for me, was playing in a group under Chuck Mangione while in high school. Chuck had written some outstanding jazz ensemble charts before he became well-known. I remember having a couple of solo opportunities. At one point Chuck pulled me aside, and his comments had a sobering effect. He said that what I was doing was pretty much bullshit. Nice phraseology, but in retrospect he was correct. I was playing as fast as I could with little thought of the context or what served the song. The co-conductor of the band, drummer Vinnie Ruggerio, was trying to tell me the same thing in a different way. Specifically, I had a solo spot on a James Brown song, a one-chord vamp, and Vinnie was telling me “look, just get down low on your horn, on that low B flat, play something real good rhythmically and honk away.” I remember dismissing his advice, thinking he was foolish for telling me that, because the song was in the key of B and here’s this drummer telling me to honk on a B flat. I completely missed the point of what he was trying to say, but it was the same message Chuck had. The point was not to play everything I knew, especially because I barely knew anything. The first requirement is to improvise within the groove. Perhaps you’ve heard the anecdote about the cymbal that came flying across the bandstand when a young Charlie Parker tried to play many notes, beyond his capability. Jo Jones threw the cymbal as a critique of Bird’s effort. Chuck Mangione delivered the same message to me that day. It took a while for me to think of it as a favor.

Almost all young improvisers go through a phase of overplaying. It’s a way to deal with an inability to create melodic statements over chord changes. Sometimes it takes years to develop that skill, and sometimes the skill doesn’t mature at all. Even though it can be painful for the young player to hear, it helps to have someone point it out, even though it may not sink in until many a chorus later.

Mercy, Mercy

We didn’t start the jazz archive project until 1995, so there is a long list of jazz artists we never had a chance to interview. Foremost among them for me was Julian “Cannonball” Adderley. If I had to pick only one musician who grabbed me and who I wanted to emulate, it would be Cannonball.

I can’t recall what the first recording was that piqued my interest in him. I can remember the Glenn Miller that my parents exposed me to, and I can remember Brubeck’s “Take Five” with Paul Desmond having a strong effect on me. With Cannonball it was probably his recording of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” because it was getting significant radio play and had such a great hook. At the end of the buildup in the chorus, Cannon plays a note that drips with soul and joy. Later I can remember singing along to his recording using the smarmy words from the Buckinghams, the classic line “My baby, she’s made out of love/Like one of those bunnies from a Playboy Club.” I wonder how Joe Zawinul, the author of “Mercy, Mercy, Mercy,” felt about that cover version.

Cannonball was a guy who was blessed with just about everything you could want as a musician and an entertainer. He had a huge, flexible sound, comfortable with ballads, bebop or blues; he had a great band, co-led with his brother, Nat; he had two fine composers in the band, Nat and Joe Zawinul; and he always had dynamic bass and drums, first with Louis Hayes on drums and Sam Jones on bass, and later with Roy McCurdy and either Victor Gaskin or Walter Booker. This latter was actually my favorite Cannonball group. Roy McCurdy had a great viewpoint, figuratively and literally, about playing with Nat and Cannon. In our interview we were marveling at the live recording of “Country Preacher” and the reaction from the audience after the dramatic pause in the middle of the song. Here’s what Roy had to say about that, from our 1995 session:

RM: “I was behind them all the time, looking at them. And his brother was short and Cannon was tall. And they had a way of snapping their fingers and moving, and their behinds were both in sync you know. And they would be snapping and the behinds would be in sync. And during that pause, that’s what was going on, you know they had that little sync thing going. And then they’d go back and hit it. Joe would hit it, and the people loved that thing. It was a kind of a follow up to 'Mercy, Mercy.' Yeah it was really nice.”

Along with all this musicianship, Cannonball was among the rare jazz musicians who had what you might call the “gift of gab,” but it was more than gab. He had a way of introducing the band, his songs, and his whole approach to performing brought the audience with him. He was profoundly hip, but didn’t have to work at it. As he was fond of saying “hipness is a fact of life, not a state of mind.” You don’t decide you’re going to be hip, you just are, and he was that.

I had a wonderful moment during an interview with pianist and arranger Shelly Berg. Without my prompting, he expressed better than I could, what made Cannonball so unique. Here’s what Shelly said, from our interview in 2000. I’m happy to share Shelly’s words here because they perfectly sum up what I have felt about Cannonball since around 1966.

SB: “[Cannonball was] the perfect culmination of every attribute. Impeccable technique, impeccable time, as sophisticated harmonically and melodically as anybody of his day, and yet so incredibly soulful and bluesy. And you put all those things together and there’s just no other player for me that’s ever synergized all those things so well. And nobody’s ever swung any more than that.”

I was fortunate to see Cannonball perform on three or four occasions. A couple of times he came to a club in my hometown, Rochester, NY. In one case it was a library concert and I remember discovering the reality of the jazz artist. The band seemed to be running late, and it was informative to watch the band members, Cannonball, Joe Zawinul and the rest, carrying their own drums, keyboards, etc., and setting them up. There was no road crew for those guys.

Later on, at SUNY Fredonia, some very hip music students got together and brought the Cannonball Adderley Quintet to Fredonia for a three day residency, so I found myself sitting five feet away from Cannonball with a small group of saxophonists in a clinic situation. He called “Straight, No Chaser,” to which I happily knew the melody, and asked us each to play a couple of choruses. It was totally a capella, with no rhythm section. I can’t recall what I played. I’m sure it wasn’t brilliant, but it didn’t matter. He was gracious and hip, even at 9 a.m.

Fortunately most of Cannonball’s LP’s have been reissued on CD. Among my favorite recordings that my readers might love I would include:

• “Hamba Nami” from Accent on Africa, Capitol Records, ST 2987.
• “I Can’t Get Started” from Nancy Wilson and the Cannonball Adderley Quintet, Capitol Records, SM 1657.
• “Country Preacher” from Live at Operation Breadbasket, Capitol, SKAO 404.
• “Sack O’ Woe” from Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Capitol ST 2663.