Paul Wolfowitz's socks
Nice one (be sure to click on photo).
The World Bank = The Extermination of All Light Beings.
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January 2007
Cy Walter
This review ran in the February issue of DownBeat.
Cy Walter
The Park Avenue Tatum
SWCD32
Begin the Beguine
Body and Soul
Broadway Melody of 1940 Medley: I've Got My Eyes On You / Between You And Me/I Happen To Be In Love / I Concentrate On You
By Jupiter Medley: Everything I've Got / Nobody's Heart/Careless Rhapsody / Jupiter Forbid
Crazy Rhythm
Dancing in the Dark
Embraceable You
Falling In Love With Love
Higher and Higher Medley: Nothing But You / From Another World/Every Sunday Afternoon / It Never Entered My Head
I Can't Get Started
Just One of Those Things
I Get a Kick Out Of You
Lady in the Dark Medley: My Ship / This Is New / Jenny
Liza
Pal Joey Medley: Bewitched / I Could Write a Book / Plant You Now, Dig You Later
Panama Hattie Medley: My Mother Would Like You / Make it Another Old Fashioned, Please / Let's Be Buddies / Who Would Have Dreamed / Fresh as a Daisy
It's Only A Paper Moon
'S Wonderful
The Blue Room
The Way You Look Tonight
Very Warm For May Medley: All The Things You Are / Heaven In My Arms/All In Fun / In The Heart Of The Dark / That Lucky Fellow
Waltz In Swing Time
You Never Know Medley: From Alpha to Omega / At Long Last Love / For No Rhyme Or Reason/You Never Know / What Shall I Do? / Maria
Total Time: 78.57
Who was Cy Walter? Unless you used to drink at the posh Drake Hotel in the early sixties, you probably don’t know. However, a small group of devotees have kept his name alive, and they are why we have The Park Avenue Tatum, a collection of his 1940’s recordings. This is the first CD of Walter (1915-1968), and it firmly establishes him as one of the finest interpreters of the golden age of show music.
Walter’s art is far more advanced than any other cocktail pianist. In addition to a sophisticated harmonic language, his intricate arrangements exhibit an astonishing amount of counterpoint: the low, high, and mid-registers of the instrument relate in euphonious polyphony. Jazz pianists from this era always wanted to know, “How good is your left hand?” By any standard, Walter’s is very, very good.
It’s interesting to compare Walter and Art Tatum on “Begin the Beguine,” which they both treated as a virtuoso showpiece. Walter tells the song’s sophisticated story better than Tatum, who doesn’t follow the composer’s elaborate form. (“Beguine” has the longest form of any standard, closer to a rondo in classical music than a 32-bar pop song.) Tatum swings harder. I’d call the match-up a draw.
Jazz history has shamefully ignored Walter, but in his heyday he was well known among Broadway’s elite. Richard Rodgers preferred Walter to any jazz pianist, since Walter always honored the song instead of merely "blowing." One of the finest things on The Park Avenue Tatum is Jerome Kern’s “The Way You Look Tonight,” which Walter plays as a hushed reverie. Suddenly you understand why Kern hated up-tempo bebop versions of his music.
Walter is probably best understood not in the context of either jazz or Broadway, but in the tradition of classical composer/pianists like Leopold Godowsky and Ignaz Friedman, both virtuosos who loved to transfigure Viennese waltzes and other light fare into complicated piano music. Walter’s beautiful chorus of “All the Things You Are,” with the melody singing chastely in the middle-register, decorated on top and bottom with delicate slides and runs, sounds considerably like a Godowsky treatment of a Schubert song.
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Cy Walter seems to be in the air these days; I feel part of a delightful conspiracy to get his name known again.
Very special thanks to my close friend and wonderful pianist Mike Kanan, who has introduced many, including myself, to the music of Cy Walter.
Terry Teachout's blog post on Walter is the definitive Walter essay; I had had a hard time avoiding mimicking it in my own review.
There is now a great, family-run Cy Walter website with Mp3s. Click here to listen to the version of "All the Things You Are" reviewed above. In the extensive archive, there are even scans of his scores! In the guestbook, Denny Zeitlin has also written an appreciation of Walter.
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I have been thinking of Denny Zeitlin lately: I've long known that Zeitlin's powerful solo performance of "Billie's Bounce" (a bitonal fantasy, with the theme in F and G simultaneously) was an important early influence, but while searching for the composer of "Milk" (see this post) I discovered that Zeitlin wrote the fabulous music for this skit. Zeitlin: It was done around '72 or '73, and called "1 to 10", performed with bass and drums, and sometime later, overdubbed by Grace Slick singing/saying the numbers 1 thru 10.
This is also an important (even earlier) influence! Thanks, Mr. Zeitlin!
Vanguard run continuing...
It's with some astonishment that we realize that this is our fifth engagement at our favorite NYC jazz club. VIP turnout in the last couple of days has included Joe Lovano, Billy Hart, Stanley Crouch, David Rees, David Fricke, and Donald Westlake. Blogging will resume next Tuesday or so.
Otis King at the Amsterdam sound check last summer (photos by Henk Fidder)
Checking it out
Sitting at the drums (His brush technique is not bad for a toddler--it's sort of like Mel Lewis)
Sting/Police Reunion tour?
It is still a rumor at this point, but Sting, Andy Summers, and Stewart Copeland are going to break all ticket-price records if they do indeed get back together to play a reunion tour.
Reid and Dave were riffing about the latest tour that Sting could have done...it was for very large venues like stadiums, etc. Sting was doing this amusing thing of pretending that he was going to sing a song from his solo career that the audience wasn't really into, then saying "just kidding" and kicking a Police jam.
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"Hey everybody, here's one you might remember, The Secret Marriage!"
(silence)
"Just kidding! Here we go, Message In a Bottle!"
(tumultuous applause and a rockin' rendition…)
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"How many of you have been to Bourbon Street? There's a Moon Over it tonight…"
(crickets, tumbleweeds)
"Just kidding, here's Every Breath You Take!…"
(hysteria)
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"Ok, I like to be Rock Steady. Do you like to be Rock Steady?"
(wind tunnel)
"Just kidding, here's Canary In a Coalmine!"
(fans high-five each other, screaming…)
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"Now we're gonna play Love is the Seventh Wave!"
(a few scattered claps)
"Ok, just kidding, here's Demolition Man!"
(joyous cheers and robust hollers…)
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"We're going to slow things down now with Lazarus Heart."
(almost a groan from the tolerant audience)
"Ok, you like those Police songs, huh? Here's Mother."
(dismal silence)
"Ok, to hell with it--Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic!"
(security is almost overwhelmed…)
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In all seriousness, TBP loves the Police. Andy Summers is really underrated and Stewart Copeland is one of the very greatest rock drummers of all time.
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And in defense of Sting without the Police: any jazz player our age who doesn't consider Sting's first solo album Dream of the Blue Turtles an early guilty pleasure or influence is probably lying.
From Dennis Lehane's "A Drink Before the War"
Lehane is a well-known crime author whose bestselling novel, Mystic River, was turned into an overrated movie.
A Drink Before the War was his first book, and I read it enroute to Mexico. It is not really recommended unless like you like Lehane's work in general or other modern sentimental slicks like Patricia Cornwell, Michael Connelly, or Jonathan Kellerman.
However, the deep racial scars in America's psyche boil up with more realism than usual in A Drink Before the War (the war is actually a race riot). And I really like this description of two Boston cops, right before they begin interrogation:
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"We have an appointment with Detective [Devin] Amronkin."
The cop nodded. "Go up these stairs. Fifth floor, take a right. You'll see them."
We did. He was sitting on a table at the end of a long corridor with his partner, Oscar Lee. Oscar is big and black and just as mean as Devin. They have been partners so long that they even got their respective divorces on the same day. Each had taken a bullet for the other, and penetrating the surface of their relationship would be just as easy as digging through cinder block with a plastic spoon. They noticed us at the same time, looked up, and held their tired eyes on us as we walked down the corridor to them. They both looked liked shit, tired and cranky, ready to stomp on anyone who didn't give them what they wanted. They both had splotches of blood on their shirts and coffee cups in their hands.
We entered the office and I said, "Hey."
They nodded. If they became more similar they'd be joined at the hip.
Oscar said, "Have a seat, folks."
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"They have been partners so long that they even got their respective divorces on the same day" is particularly fine, seeming to summon the whole tired inevitability of law enforcement in 17 words.
Email from Django Bates
It isn't always so great to be on the recipient list of some people's "bulk email" concepts, especially if they send out something every day or so. But, as in everything else, Django Bates shows tact and style.
The extremely amusing email is reproduced exactly as received. For those confused about the piano solo reference, the great Tommy Flanagan was a bit flummoxed sight-reading this tune in the studio, and his discomfort is plain to hear. Note: The best solo piano version of "Giant Steps" is by Django Bates.
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Kære alle,
Godt nyt år og Happy New Year.
I very rarely send emails with links to "interesting things", because you are all too busy for that kind of flippancy. But, just this once, please forgive it.
Here's a really nice animation of Coltrane's 1959 recording of Giant Steps. It should put you in a good mood; some of the detail is very amusing (especially the early long note; the yellow one and the phrase that follows it)!
http://www.michalevy.com/gs_download.html
Interesting that the piano solo has been censored... discuss
I fully expect to get several emails saying, yeah, I saw that in 2003. In which case, please enjoy again.
Most people I speak to are planning a slightly rankling 2007 fraught with difficulties and gloomy news from around what's left of the globe:
don't worry, 2008 - the year of the RAT - is just around the corner!
Take care,
Django
Much more about and for Michael---
Trumpeter Randy Sandke's extensive memorial and memories at Rifftides. The Sandke/Brecker/Jim McNeely/John Goldsby/Kenny Washington date has at least one standout track, "Brownstones."
Much more about and for Alice---
---is up at Destination:Out! Note extensive collection of links.
TBP Media
The inbox is full with queries about what song we are playing on PBS's Jazz at Newport. It is "Physical Cities" by Reid Anderson, and will appear on our next album.
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There is a nice long article about David King in Minneapolis/St. Paul Magazine here.
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Buffalo Collision, a new group with Tim Berne, Mat Maneri, Ethan Iverson, and David King, plays its first gig at Tonic this coming Sunday night (January 21).
TBP is at the Village Vanguard next week Jan 23-28.
