Marian McPartland: “Stomping at the Savoy” (1956)
So whom did I listen to in those years (1971-78) when I was teaching at Wells? Half of my courses were new each year, I was writing a seemingly interminable dissertation, trying to be a loving husband and father, and earning roughly half of what I would have if I’d finished my damned dissertation in a reasonable length of time, not the ten years it took me to do it. And if I had had my doctorate in hand, maybe I could have landed the full-time job I needed, with a long term future. I loved being a father, I loved Esther and I loved teaching, but that was a terribly stressful period and it wore us all down.
Yet, tight as money was, I still bought records, just fewer of them, and we still heard and saw some performers –more often than not, at Wells when they came to perform.
Marian McPartland came first. She played with a trio, Billy Hart on drums: I was excited because Hart had recorded with Miles. (I saw Hart again last year, with the Cookers, a group of oldsters that included Billy Harper and Cecil McBee, not bad company!) McPartland and her trio played in the auditorium, on the first floor of the building where my office and classrooms were. She was as good as I’d expected her to be. I only had one album of hers at the time: Joe Morello (later of the Dave Brubeck quartet) was on drums and Gene Chirico on bass. She was fluent in a boppish sort of way and used both hands, not one, when she soloed. I remember noticing that Billy Hart’s ride cymbal had a triangle-shaped piece missing from the front edge. It’s funny how details lodge in your memory and never let go. We went to a reception afterwards where I got to tell McP. and H. how excited I was to meet them. That’s the end of my story.
My final year at Wells, Gary Burton came. He’d long been a favorite of mine: I’d been buying his albums since Tennessee Firebird and Duster. Jeremy was seven then so we went together to hear his group. It was a quintet: Burton on vibes; Pat Metheny and Mick Goodrich, vastly different sounds and playing styles, on guitars; Steve Swallow (one of my favorites), on electric bass; and Bob Moses, drums. (I didn’t know it then but that was the second time I’d heard Moses –he had been the drummer with the Free Spirits at the Balloon Factory in 1967.)
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I was full up to my neck back then with jazz rock fusion. One year, I held lunch time sessions for any students who wanted to come –low key events where I played forty-five minutes of music and we talked about it. There was never more than a handful of students. I suppose that’s why I stopped the sessions eventually –that, and because I’d run out of wisdom to impart to them about the music. The first session was standard stuff: a pocket history of jazz from Armstrong to Ellington and Basie to Parker and Gillespie. I think it ended with the Rollins piece, “Why Don’t I ?”
The second session I played jazz fusion. Weather Report. Mahavishnu. Chick Corea’s group, Return to Forever. Billy Cobham’s band, probably “Red Baron” from Spectrum (1973) –his best album by far. Maybe something by Burton, but what? Larry Coryell and McLaughlin dueting on Spaces? I know I didn’t play any Miles –for one simple reason –the pieces were too long to fit into a forty-five minute session with multiple pieces being played.
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The best music night out in those years was the night Esther and I walked past a jazz club in Ithaca and saw that Rahsaan Roland Kirk would be playing there that night with a quartet. That was a slam dunk –we came back to hear him: Kirk on everything (tenor sax, manzello, stretch, flute, nose flute, tape recorder), Hilton Ruiz on piano, a drummer and bass player. Kirk was all I’d expected him to be, even better in person where his tendency to ramble on in conversation wasn’t off-putting, just a way of connecting.
The atmosphere was relaxed and intimate. It felt like he was talking to you. The set was good too –Ruiz was good, Kirk was awesome. His roots were apparent: he joined the sound and vocabulary of heavy toned sax players from the late swing/early bop era to a more modernist music a la Mingus. The way he conceived of playing was more like Coleman Hawkins or Don Byas than anyone younger but what he played he fit with the younger cats as well.
Near the end of the set, Kirk announced he was going to play “Body and Soul.” That song has been the Mt. Everest of ballads for tenor players ever since Coleman Hawkins nailed it cold in 1939. (Listen too to Sonny Rollins, 1958.) The other musicians took a walk. Kirk taped a small cassette player to his tenor. He adjusted the mike so it was close to the bell of his horn and turned on the cassette player. Out poured Kirk playing flute, the melody of “Body and Soul.” For the next four or five minutes, we listened as the taped flute played melody and Kirk, present in front of us, played an obligato around it on his tenor.
It was magical.
ADDITIONAL LISTENING
Gary Burton hangs up his mallets at 74: with Makato Ozone, “Bag’s Groove”
Roland Kirk-Jack McDuff, “Three for Dizzy” (1961)
Coleman Hawkins: “Body and Soul” (1939)
MUSIC & ME 