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| escritos entrevistas trabalhos alunos UA e mail e fax riff Jazz de A a ZZ |
escritos e entrevistas > riff > ver riff
| Klactoveesedstene |
| 10-12-2006 |
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Klactoveesedstene Jazzlers, I apologize. My stupid server crashed when I had typed about 40 lines of this message. It saved what I typed, but since I always type too far to the right, and to work on the message I have to forward it, everything gets moved over. So to make it more readable I'm just going to delete the one or two characters that got moved to the next line in the forward. I think you'll be able to fill in the missing punctuation and letters. (I didn't know then it would have been possible to get what I had typed back on the screen without the angle brackets. Lades) I ended last week with the thought that 1947 was truly a year for vintage Bird One reason for that is that the musician's union declared another one of those absurd recording bans beginning Jan 1, 1948. (The first one, that lasted from 1942 through some point in 1944 is of course the reason we have very very litt documentation of the evolution of bebop. No recordings of the bebop laborator that was the Hines band. It's amazing how many people, including professors o American history in this (and I'm sure, other) university(ies) think that tha first idiotic ban was due to wartime shortages). With the second ban approaching there was a rush to record as much as possible before it began. Bird's quintet did three separate dates for Dial in less than 2 months, a total of 18 vintage sides, and a late December session for Savoy . Poston had ended week 5 by playing one tune, "Dexterity," from the 10/28/47 Dial session. So he opened this week by playing the other five pieces from that session. They include what some regard as Bird's greatest masterpiece, "Embraceable You." Played as a ballad all the way he never gets to close to the original melody. Less than a week later there was another session, 11/4/47. This included the notoriously titled "Klactoveesedstene." In ‘Bird Lives !’, Russell relates: "The 'Klactoveesedstene' title was his [Bird's] own. He wrote it out one nigh at the [Three] Deuces on the back of a [notice of] minimum charge card, offering no explanation of its meaning. When I asked, he gave me a stony stare and walked off." Russell goes on to recount his attempts to ascertain the meaning, finally asking Dean Benedetti, who as we've already seen and will see again, taped some of Bird's club performances. "Why, man, it's just a sound." However, more than 20 years after ‘Bird Lives!’ was published, Poston interviewed Russell and he has a subsequent theory: "Bird was going through a mock German period. Klactus-auf-wiedersehn. Using a German-English dictionar Russell says this means "good-bye to applause" or "good-bye to gossip." Klaus ? Klaus? More useful to me was to leaf through Koch's book of musical analysis of Bird' s recordings and have pointed out the similarity of "Klacto..." to "Perdido," though it is not the identical chord structure throughout. I told how in week 5 Poston covered the two September broadcasts of the Bands for Bonds gimmick. Well, the modernists won so they came back in November for a final broadcast. Fats Navarro replaced Dizzy, Sarah Vaughn sang one number, and tenorist Allen Eager was present. Bird, Tristano, Bauer, and clarinetist John LaPorta returned from the September broadcasts. It was not, by and large a showcase for Bird. Each horn player got his own feature. Then a final jam on Ko-Ko. But Poston did play the entire broadcast. My remarks of last week about the dual presence of the boppers, and of Tristano and Bauer, apply equally to these performances. At this point Poston mentions that there is some stuff on the Philology label, said to have been recorded in Chicago between the Bands for Bonds broadcast an the last Dial date of 12/17/47. But since the static makes those tracks almos unlistenable, and since there is no independent documentation that Bird left New York between the broadcast and the Dial date, he's not going to play any o that stuff. Which then brings him to the final Dial date. J.J. Johnson joined the quintet for this date. It includes "Crazeology," which was recorded by Bud Powell as "Bud's Bubble," and by the composer, bop trumpeter Benny Harris as "Little Benny." The kick for me was to listen to it for the thousandth time and realize for the first time that the A part is based on the A part of that tune I love so much, "Lullaby in Rhythm." (Don't really hear it in the head but in the solos it's unmistakeable once you realize it or have it pointed out). This date also included "Bongo Beep." In subsequent years as the Dial stuff was reissued by one el-cheapo label after another, the titles from these three late '47 sessions got seriously confused, and none worse than this blues. On most issues it was incorrectly titled "Bird Feathers." In fact, "Bird Feathers" was recorded at the 11/4 date and was given a fantastic revisiting> in the Cannonball-Gil Evans collaboration around 1959. However, "Bongo Beep" was given a very neat set of lyrics (even though they celebrate Sonny Stitt and not Bird) in the wonderful, early '80s Mark Murphy-Richie Cole album, ‘Bop for Kerouac’. I'm so taken with those lyrics I was going to digress to share them with y'all here, but they're five (twelve bar blues) choruses long, so I'll submit them in a separate appendix. Then comes a surprise, at least to me, and Jim, I want your and Don's input on this. [Don's not a jazzler but an important Portland collector who played a key role in unearthing the Redcross recordings heard earlier in this series]. Poston starts talking about a Norman Granz limited edition album (which of course means a set of 12" 78 rpm records) called ‘The Jazz Scene’ with art work by David Stone Martin, photos by John Meely (I've never heard of this guy--have no idea how his name is spelled) and liners written by Granz or by the artist. Several stars of jazz were engaged to do one side of a 12" 78. And who appears but Granz himself explaining all this and stating that Neil Hefti's "Repetition," an orchestral thing with Bird on top, and Bird's own "The Bird" were part of this; that they were recorded in Carnegie Hall, not as part of a concert but simply used as a recording studio. Now the thing that surprises me is the dating of these things. Poston places them in 12/47 before the midwest tour of Bird's quintet. Every source I've ever seen places them in late '48 or early '49. Poston talks as if there's no room for doubt that they were done in 12/47. Granz, in the interviews doesn't actually state a date. Jim? Don? However, Granz does share some interesting tidbits. Poston says it had been argued about for years whether "Repetition" had been written with Bird in mind or whether he had just happened into Carnegie Hall for his date while it was being recorded and joined in. Granz says it was the latter. He also says that he had always wanted to get Tatum. Finally got him, he thought, and wanted it to be a duet with Bird [like the Tatum-Webster and Tatum-DeFranco things he would later produce]. Says Tatum didn't show up (ironic--that was so characteristic of Bird) and he had to hurriedly call Hank Jones, Ray Brown, and Shelley Manne. Earlier Granz had said that when he engaged the musicians for this project he had told each leader, "anything you want to do is OK as long as it's something you haven't done before." And indeed, "The Bird" is a minor key piece of which there really aren't that many performances by Bird. Poston points out that it's based on "Topsy." That sounds right to me as regards the A part. The bridge, to me, is clearly the " " bridge, which also clearly to me is the "Love Me or Leave Me" bridge. Now somebody's got to help me. I don't know "Topsy" very well. Is it an AABA form? i.e. does it have a bridge? Poston then relates that Bird's quintet embarked on a tour and while in Detroit did a date for the Savoy label. I would point out that there was long a Detroit club called the "Bluebird." I don't know whether it was in existence when Bird cut "Bluebird" on this date. But clearly either the club was named after this piece, or this piece was done in homage to the club (which would have been named in Bird's honour even if it existed before this piece was cut). In the '90s a wonderful annual event has been occurring in Detroit . Named "Remembering the Bluebird" [may not be the exact name] each year it honors two of the great players who came out of Detroit in the '50s. It's also important to note that the head of "Bluebird" provided the theme for Moody's "Last Train from Overbrook" (even though the former is a twelve bar blues and the latter is not). I've already noted that because of the "who cares about musical history?" musicians' union recording ban, there are no 1948 studio recordings. Fortunately Dean Benedetti recorded Bird at an engagement at the Three Deuces. Benedetti had bought one of the first reel to reel tape recorders available to the general public and the recordings have much less of a fragmentary quality than those from a year earlier at the Hi-de-Ho club in LA. Long solos by Bird. Lades * este texto intrigante embora não seja meu era como eu gostava que o fosse descobri-o no fundo de uma arca de recordações e investigações é tempo de o trazer ao vosso conhecimento e de parabenziar seu desconhecido (para mim) autor Bird still lives! JD |
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