Moody

The history of jazz now spans a hundred plus years. The founding fathers have long since passed into music history, and, sadly, the ranks of the second and third generations of master musicians is becoming thin. On December 9^th we lost James Moody, saxophonist, vocalist, band leader and a man who spread optimism wherever he went. I met James Moody in San Diego on February 13, 1998. Our interview was delightful, mostly because James had a knack for putting people at ease.

Along with his high level of musicianship, he was also known for his relaxed and humorous bandstand personality. As a disciple of Dizzy Gillespie, James gathered musical knowledge as well as tips on how to engage an audience and keep your musicians loose:

JM: But Diz man, I’d be playing, we’d be on the bandstand, and Dizzy would come up and whisper in my ear “Moody your fly’s open,” and man I’d be very — and then he’d look at me with that look you know.

Like many musicians, James was able to remember the circumstances and the feeling of his first infatuation with music, realized through a storefront window:

MR: How did you come to the saxophone? Was it your first choice of instruments?

JM: I just loved the way it looked, and loved the way it sounded.

MR: Yeah?

JM: Yeah. I told my wife Linda, I told her “honey,” I says “in Newark, New Jersey where I lived, around the corner from where I lived, I lived on West Street, and if you went down the block and turned a corner, that was Springfield Avenue, there was a music store there called Dawn & Kirchner. And they used to have these windows, and they were just lined up with saxophones, you know, just lined up. And boy I used to go and just press my nose in it and look at it. Oh, man.” And finally one day my uncle bought me, he got me a saxophone, but it didn’t look like those, it was silver and it was alto, second hand, you know. But later on I finally got a nice horn. But the first horn I got, when I got it, oh man, I dug it. I put it in the bed next to me and just looked at it. I was out man.

MR Oh, that’s nice, that’s nice. I wish we had a photo of that.

JM: Yeah. Sixteen years old.

MR: And that was an alto?

JM: Alto, yeah. And you know what? It must have been a Conn because it had one of those screw things on it. Because I even forgot what — like in those days, I mean it didn’t mean anything, Conn or whatever, it was a saxophone.

James’ early career received a boost with a serendipitous incident. While in Europe as a young man, he recorded a spontaneous version of “I’m in the Mood for Love.” The numbers of records sold involving a jazz hit certainly pales in comparison with a rock hit, but indeed this did become a hit for James and brought him back to the United States. His version of the song became known as “Moody’s Mood for Love.” James related the story behind the engaging saxophone introduction:

MR: So up until that point, even when you recorded “Moody’s Mood for Love,” it was all coming from your ear?

JM: All by ear. “Moody’s Mood for Love,” the same thing. What I did was, I was playing tenor, so Lars Gullen, who was a very fantastic baritone jazz player in Sweden — good musicians in Sweden boy, wonderful — he had this beat up looking silver alto sitting by him at the record date. I asked him do you mind if I look at it? He said no. In the old days it was different. You played other people’s horns. You know you would never do that now. So anyway, they says you have one more cut to do, what would you like to do? I said how about “I’m in the Mood for Love?” Okay? And they said okay. So Gus Aphalia — this is the truth — the arranger, he went into the john and jotted down the harmonies, and then came back out and put them up on the thing, and we did it in one take. Now here’s why it sounded like it sounded. When they hit the chord — boom — [scats]. I’m trying to find the notes, because it’s alto now, not tenor. And people said oh you must have been inspired. I said yeah, I’m inspired to try and find the notes, that’s what I was inspired.

“Moody’s Mood for Love” became one of his theme songs and his version was eventually covered with a vocal version by Eddie Jefferson and King Pleasure.

On the strength of this record James returned to the United States, against his better judgement. While in his later years he may have struck us as a man who was always upbeat and full of optimism, he had his share of negative experiences in his life. The most telling was in dealing with the racism pervading much of the United States during his early years. He related one incident which he experienced as a band leader traveling in the south:

JM: Because I had had it, like with the racism that went on. I mean it was — remember I told you about the Brook Benton Revue? We were on the tour, and, I forget just where we were, but I had a hundred dollar bill. So I went into the donut shop to get some donuts. They said they didn’t have any change. So I went across the street to an automobile company, where they sell automobiles, asked for change, they didn’t have it there. So I said oh the heck with it. I got back on the bus. So when I got on the bus, in a minute, Brook Benton called me and says “hey, Moody.” I said “what?” He says “this state trooper wants to see you.” So I thought he was joking, a state trooper. I looked out, sure enough there’s a state trooper down there. So I get off, and the state trooper looks at me, and he says “what’s your name?” I told him I says “James Moody.” He says, “what do you do?” I said “well see, my name’s on the bus there,” I said “I’m with the band here.” And Brook says “maybe —” he says “get the hell out of here, get over here, I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to him.” So he says “how much money do you have?” I says “I don’t know, maybe four or five hundred dollars.” So he says “let me see it.” So I reached in one pocket and pulled out my traveler’s checks. And in another pocket I had cash, but something told me don’t do it. So I gave him the traveler’s checks, about seven, eight hundred bucks in traveler’s checks, because I had to pay the band. And so he looks at the traveler’s checks, he looks at me and he says “too much money.” So what am I supposed to say to the guy? Too much money? I mean I didn’t say anything. He looked again, “too much money.” I said “well,” I says, “I’m the leader here,” and I said “and I have to pay the musicians. I haven’t paid them all.” He says “too much money.” So he put it down and he looked at me again. “Too much” — he must have said this about fifteen or twenty times, then he called for another car, and another car came with a lieutenant, and they talked, and then a captain came and they talked. After this crap went on about a half hour, forty-five minutes, they came over again and did it again. “Too much money — too much money.” And then I mean he just gave me the traveler’s checks back and he left. Now you know what happened? When I went in to the automobile store, evidently they said there’s a negro over here with a hundred dollar bill, he probably stole it. So the cops came, and that’s how that came about.

Unlike some of his contemporaries who started their careers during the early years of bebop, James lived a long and full life, passing away at the age of 85. He was able to reap some of the benefits when jazz became a respected music in the United States. He received honors from the International Jazz Hall of Fame and was named an National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master. Still he was less than happy with the fact that a man in his position was unable to call his own shots when recording an album at the age of 72. During the interview we listened to an excerpt from his then most recent release entitled “Moody Plays Mancini.”

MR: How did this album come about?

JM: Well the company wanted a concept. And that’s the thing nowadays, concept.

MR: Right.

JM: So we came up with the concept. Frank Sinatra before this. And then after this, Mancini, so that was the concept. But that’s how that came about.

MR: Does that bother you at all? That you need to do a concept?

JM: Yes it does, I have to be truthful, yes it does. Because you see what I think is that, and it’s been like this for a long time, the artist or the musician should make the records, and the record companies should sell them. But it’s the other way around. They want to make the records and then they want you to sell them. I mean that’s the impression I get.

MR: That the people that hold the purse strings are not musicians.

JM: No, they never are … But you know what I would love to do? I would love to be able to go into the studio with the musicians that I want, and the engineer should be there, and I’d just do what I wanted to do, the way I wanted to do it, and that would be it. Rather than somebody stopping me — hold it, take one more take. I’d like to just be able to do that.

James was one of those people who make me think I should be more like him — to do my best to spread a positive attitude and engage with people I barely know. He was a self-described romantic, but could still swing the music while romanticizing it. He never failed to acknowledge the emotional and career support that his wife Linda provided for him. I felt privileged to spend 90 minutes with such a man, and of the 300+ interviews I’ve experienced, his was the only one which ended with the interviewee asking of me “can I get a hug?”

In Search of A Sound

Music is a combination of sounds, and with jazz music our listening experience can vary from the relative simplicity of the piano-bass-drums trio to the complexity of the Duke Ellington Orchestra consisting of 18 or so musicians, each with his own individual sound. What makes the sound of any individual jazz musician compelling is a complex issue. Since high school I’ve been in love with the sound of Cannonball Adderley. His saxophone sound is buoyant, emotional and deep-bodied, and it’s a sound I have tried to emulate as best I can. At the same time I can’t separate Cannonball’s alto sax sound from the sound of his band, especially in the Joe Zawinul years of the 1960’s. Those two things together represent my favorite jazz sound. I got to see Cannonball and his band a few times and I feel safe in saying that Cannonball’s sound was a direct reflection of the man that he was.

The subject of an instrumentalist’s sound was often discussed in our jazz archive interviews. The artists who had their formative years in the thirties and forties took great pride in finding a sound that distinguished them from their fellow players. Harry “Sweets” Edison in particular talked about the importance of not sounding like the guy sitting next to him in his interview in March of 1995:

SE: Most of the musicians in those days demanded respect because they were an artist. And they were all individualists. Everybody had a sound of their own. They could be identified on the record. Like if Billie Holiday would sing on the record you’d know it’s nobody but Billie Holiday. She’s the only one sounded like that. If Louis Armstrong, he can hit one note on a record, and you know it’s Louis Armstrong. Nobody sounded like Lester Young. Like Coleman Hawkins. Like Bunny Berigan. Like Benny Goodman, Chu Berry, Dizzy Gillespie. They all had a sound that they could be recognized. And that was our ambition in my day to not be an imitator, but an originator, you know. And as they used to say they’d rather be the world’s worst originator than the world’s greatest imitator. Because there’s nobody like the man that first sounded like that. You can never capture his feeling. So we all wanted to be individualists. I made many, many records with Billie Holiday and it was always a joy just to be in her company because she was just absolutely — I met her when she was about 19 years old. And what a voluptuous, beautiful girl she was. She was absolutely just gorgeous. And she had a sound that when you hear her on a record, you know that’s Billie Holiday. And that’s what we strived for in those days. Nowadays it seems like musicians have their idols and they don’t venture any place else but what their idol is playing. Like Charlie Parker. All alto players sound like Charlie Parker. All the tenor players nowadays sound like John Coltrane. All the trumpet players either sound like Miles or Dizzy. So there’s no originality nowadays with the musicians.

MR: Well, you know finding that original sound I guess is not that easy.

SE: Well we did it.

MR: You sure did.

Of course there are mechanical considerations for what makes a sound on any instrument. On a saxophone you have multiple factors, the horn, the mouthpiece, the reed, et cetera, but a 2010 interviewee, baritone saxophonist Gary Smulyan basically dismissed these technical considerations when it comes to what comprises an individual’s sound:

MR: I could tell that sound, in the general sense of the word, seems to be very important to you. Because when someone asked you about the biggest difference between playing alto and moving to baritone it was all about the sound.

GS: Um hum. Well to me in music, general sound is first. Sound comes before anything. I mean if you listen to all the great musicians in this music, they all have individual sounds. That’s the first thing that you hear that grabs you, right? If you listen to, just the tenor saxophone, right? John Coltrane, Johnny Griffin, Gene Ammons, Joe Lovano, Joshua Redman, Chris Potter, Don Byas, Frank Wess, and the list goes on and on, Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, Georgie Auld, they all play the tenor saxophone but they all have — Al Cohn, Zoot Sims — I could go on all day — Tina Brooks, Hank Mobley. You know they play one note and you know who they are immediately. And to me that’s like the defining thing about being a musician, and for me the most important thing is your sound. And I’ve given a lot of thought and a lot of practice to try to really develop a sound that’s personal and unique to me, because that’s the first thing that people hear. I mean you could be a great technician but if you don’t have a good sound no one’s going to want to hear you and you’re not going to be able to get past your sound. And it’s really the identifying characteristic of who you are as a musician. And your sound is not in the instrument, the sound is not — in my case — it’s not in the saxophone, it’s not in the reed, it’s not in the mouthpiece and it’s not in the ligature. The sound is something that you carry within your very being. And that’s what comes out. So take someone like Sonny Rollins, right? I think that if you gave Sonny Rollins 50 different tenor saxes, 50 different reeds and 50 different ligatures, he’s going to sound like Sonny Rollins, with some variation because maybe the instruments aren’t comfortable. Maybe his comfort level behind the instrument isn’t the same. But essentially what’s going to come out is Sonny Rollins. Because his sound is not in the instrument. And I tell that to my students. I say don’t look for the magic instrument, because there’s no magic instrument.

Every jazz musician is a product of what he or she listens to on the way up. Some musicians tend to grab onto one or two artists for their sources, while others may sample from a wider array of sounds, and not only the sound of their own instrument. Musicians often say they get ideas about their sound from players who don’t play like instruments, it’s more about conception, phrasing, and note choices.

The “Three ations” from Clark Terry is often quoted when the discussion of sound and absorbing influences comes up. Clark was interviewed in 1995 by Joe Williams, the late singer, who was helpful us with our then-budding archive.

CT: We call them the “ation stages,” you’ve got to go through them “ation stages.” Everybody imitated somebody as the first step. The first cat didn’t hear nothing but railroad tracks. He imitated that [scats]. Or whatever. You’ve got to imitate something.

JW: You go from imitation to assimilation, from assimilation to innovation.

Saxophonist Jerry Dodgion also spoke on creating a sound and quoted fellow saxman Pepper Adams who summed it up even more succinctly:

MR: You were influenced by Charlie Parker. Is that a fair statement?

JD: Well sure.

MR: Wasn’t everybody I guess.

JD: I guess, sure. I mean I was never good enough to copy anybody … [but one time] when Pepper spoke he says “well you know when you copy from one person that’s plagiarism. But if you copy from everybody it’s called research.”

Tenor saxophonist Ernie Watts was interviewed in 2003 and has been featured on hundreds of recordings and related the practical considerations that influenced his sound:

MR: You’ve got a very distinctive sound. And I’m wondering was there a period of trying different mouthpieces and all that, and were you trying to sound like somebody to arrive at your own thing?

EW: No it evolved through the music business. The only person I ever really tried to sound like was Trane. Because that was where I’m coming from. That’s where I plugged into. Everybody has someone they emulate when they’re a kid, when they’re learning how to play. And so Coltrane was it for me. I developed my sound, interestingly enough, from playing pop music. When you play pop music, when you play pop solos on all of these records, and you have eight bars in the middle of the tune and then you get to play on the fade while they fade it out and then the DJ tries to fade it out as fast as he can, as soon as they hear the vocal end and the saxophone start you’re out of there.

MR: It’s their cue.

EW: Unless you bought the record, and then you get to hear the saxophone solo go for like twenty bars at the end of some of these things. But on the radio as soon as the DJ hears the saxophone solo you’re out of there. So anyway, I started working on my sound and concentrating on my sound when I realized with pop music, in order for it to be pop music, it has to be within a certain genre. It’s set up a certain way, production-wise it’s set up a certain way, harmonically it’s very simple structured music. As a soloist within that genre you can’t do anything harmonically. You can’t play chromatically through that music. You can’t do anything in that music that is intricate or evolved on a technical or harmonic level. Because at that point it’s not pop music. You take that music to a different place and it’s out of context with the music, therefore it is not right for the music. So you don’t go to a pop session and play a Charlie Parker solo. So what happens is the idiom of the music is so simple harmonically that the only way you can establish a style is to have a sound that is recognizable. So that when you play one note, when you play three notes it’s recognizable because it’s a unique tone quality. And I recognized that in the music. And so I developed my sound. It’s a combination of the stuff I grew up listening to, it’s a combination of Coltrane with a softer edge, but it’s still that center and it’s still that intensity, but it’s just very simplified.

The essence of what makes a musician’s sound distinctive and identifiable remains mostly undefinable and magical. It’s the same magic that makes a melody stick in our head, and the same magic that makes a particular improvised solo a classic.

The Right Notes

In the last blog entry the subject of “wrong notes” was addressed by quotes from players from what is best described as the hard bop school. This post-bop style places them squarely in the modern jazz era and helps us understand their comments and opinions more clearly.

An annual duty of mine at Hamilton College deals with an earlier style of jazz. Once a year at Fallcoming we host a group of hand-picked musicians who perform an evening concert of traditional and mainstream jazz. This year our group proved wildly successful. It was comprised of a sextet covering several generations, but one that was able to perform as if they were a seasoned road band. The sextet was: Bucky Pizzarelli (guitar), Nicki Parrott (bass), Evan Christopher (clarinet), Randy Sandke (trumpet), Jackie Williams (drums) and leader Dick Hyman (piano).

Thanks to John Herr for providing the excellent photographs of the Fallcoming event.

Above, Dick Hyman and this writer after the concert.

I know for a fact that the last time these six artists performed as a band was one year ago during Fallcoming 2009. They were so well received that we invited them back as a unit. This group of musicians can function as a working ensemble because they know the repertoire that Dick Hyman is likely to call, a mix of standards from the golden era of songwriting (the 30’s and 40’s), and jazz classics that predate those decades, what we can call New Orleans/Dixieland music.

These musicians would address the question of wrong notes from a different viewpoint. There is much less of the “anything works” approach. The musicians create improvisation in a well-defined playing field where wrong notes sound less like hip choices and more like mistakes. Nonetheless, their playing is highly inventive, and arguably harder. Their note choices may be more constrained by the theory behind the music, but if you had heard this concert you’d have been astounded by the inventiveness of the improvised melodies and rhythms.

A big part of the success of this event has to be attributed to Mr. Hyman, who has had an amazing career as a pianist, composer, arranger, film scorer, and concert organizer. Aside from my admiration for his playing, I am jealous of his experiences throughout his career, including the years of steady work in New York City’s studios. His day-to-day schedule included everything from jazz to semi-classical music. He also was called upon to provide incidental music for soap operas and game shows, and he played keyboards on many pop hits during the emergence of Rock & Roll.

I asked Dick Hyman about this time in his life during his first interview, in March of 1995:

MR: What kind of people did you play behind?

DH: Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, whom I’m working with now, Laverne Baker, The Coasters, The Drifters. I remember that terrible record “White Christmas” that was so popular.

MR: Did you play on that?

DH: I did. But we did all that stuff. And if you asked me what we thought of it, we always —we said to each other can you imagine we said to each other, in twenty years, this was in 1955 or so, in twenty years people will be saying to each other, “listen darling, they’re playing our song.” And you know that’s exactly what happened. All of that funny music that we laughed at became classic in Rock. And go figure it out.

MR: Well people, even musicians who’ve never done studio work, may not realize that you don’t have to like everything you play on in a studio. It’s not possible.

DH: No, no. What you have to like is being able to play it well.

That last statement ought to be written inside the instrument cases of young musicians. Dick was also called upon to do things which he might never have anticipated. He played mallet percussion, he whistled on a number of hit records, and was one of the first musicians to employ the Moog synthesizer.

Mr. Hyman is a pianist who seemingly can play anything that he can think of, in any style. He once recorded an LP with twelve different versions of the song “A Child is Born” as if played by twelve different and contrasting piano players. It’s interesting to watch him spin out his melodic and improvised phrases. His facial expression may not change at all, but the thought process behind his creations is magical.

I asked him about that thought process in our second interview, from March of 2001.

MR: I had a question also about trying to define hard things — and that is the concept of what you choose to play when you’re improvising.

DH: Oh. You mean what piece or what ideas?

MR: No. Where does improvising come from?

DH: It comes from your background and from the ideas of whomever you may be playing with, and also your technical capability. The ideas of — I’ve used this analogy before — the ideas are rather like a kaleidoscope which you shake up so that it produces different images each time but they’re made up of the same colored jewels and bits of paper. They are liable to be the same ideas in a different form every time you shake it up unless you keep adding to the kaleidoscope and put in different jewels, different colored pieces of paper, and then when you shake it up the next time it’s going to be a bit different. But there is very little, I think, of improvisation that hasn’t been thought of before or that you haven’t somehow used. The point is to keep replenishing the supply and keep on mixing it up differently. And a way that you can — certainly the tool that you use is just technique. If I’m in good shape technically I will try things that I wouldn’t otherwise. If I’m not in shape technically I won’t try to do certain things, I’ll stay where it’s safe and I know that I’ve been before. But if I feel very loose and in good shape and I’ve played a lot then I really can stretch out and try things that maybe I’ve heard other people do and see if I can get my version of, try things, just let the fingers go where they may, and pose certain problems for myself and see how I can get out of them, and just sometimes there are, too, moments where you don’t quite know where an idea comes from. Those are precious and they’re rare. If you’re lucky you’re recording them or you can write them down and they become compositions. But you watch for those. Sometimes you can chase them. If you have to compose something on a deadline of course, you really go out and you try to grab the muse and bring her back. Sometimes you can be successful. Some people use drugs and liquor to get to that stage. I’m not sure that works. I do think that, in my case, in the first part of the day might be the most creative part, and that possibly is because I’ve been thinking about the things through the night that I want to get to the next day.

It was a thrill to watch Dick Hyman in action as well as hear him. At times on this jazz concert he would employ the Basie technique, a simple raise of the eyebrow or the point of a finger indicating where the music should be sent. On a number of occasions he got up from the piano and walked over to the horn players while the drummer or bassist was soloing, had a slight word with them about something he wanted them to do, then walked back to the piano to hear the results.

I was invited to sit in on a tune at this latest Fallcoming event, and I wished I had the adjectives to describe the feeling. Let's just say being surrounded by that assemblage of talent makes it much easier to find the right notes.

Dick Hyman has recently put all of his skills into a huge project entitled Dick Hyman: A Century of Jazz Piano released on the Arbors jazz label in 2009. This is a serious collection of piano music performed by Dick Hyman, spanning the era from pre-Ragtime all the way to free improvisation. It includes five CD’s and a DVD, and Dick is currently working on an accompanying method book. It is well worth checking out.