In this music, there was before Geri Allen and after Geri Allen. She’s that important.
- Ethan Iverson
A few months ago my wife told me, “Why don’t you write more about women in Jazz?” To do just that, this week’s journey pays homage to the great jazz pianist, songwriter, educator, and mother, Geri Allen, who we lost on June 27, 2017. And I must admit, this is a tough one - I should have remembered her earlier.
Where to start? How do I express the impact Geri Allen made on my jazz journey? I have thought about it, and I’ll just focus on a small portion and leave the rest up to you.
For me, it all started with a song I heard on the radio in California in the early 1990s. I didn’t know who it was, but it stood out because it featured a tap dancer. I probably heard it on Herb Wong’s KJAZ radio show Jazz Perspectives, which I listened to pretty religiously. I suspect that Wong was playing it to help promote a Betty Carter show in San Francisco, while Allen was touring with her - check out Allen’s solo on Carter’s wonderful Love Notes from her 1994 Feed the Fire. Anyway, as I recall, ever since her 1988 release of Etudes, Wong was a big Geri Allen fan and played her music often.
The song was The Dancer from Allen’s Open on All Sides in the Middle, which was released in December 1987 on the interesting German Minor Music label:
The tap dancer is the esteemed Lloyd Storey, who at the young age of 14 danced at New York City's famed Apollo Theater, eventually touring with Bill "Bojangles" Robinson.
When I first heard The Dancer, I remember thinking, “No one features a tap dancer on a jazz song, do they? Well, Geri Allen did.
I’ve told the story before, but it’s probably worth telling again now. When I was in 5th or 6th grade in the mid-1970s, I was watching the Fred Astaire movie Broadway Melody of 1940 on our black and white TV. When Astaire asks Eleanor Powell how to do a certain tap dance step, Powell says, “It’s very simple. There’s nothing to it.” She shows him and then they start dancing - and I mean dancing!
I’m not sure why, but I wanted to do that. So I asked my mom to sign me up for tap dance lessons. Of course, I knew nothing of tap dancing and dance schools - and neither did my mom. I’m not sure she knew what to make of that. I think I know now because I had to ask her probably a dozen more times how the dance lessons were coming. I think she thought I’d forget. I’m pretty sure that was the case because Lucy Peltier’s Dance Studio was right up the street, less than a mile away. Some months later, my mom finally signed me up, and that’s where I learned my first tap dance to Sweet Georgia Brown.
I went on to tap dance through junior high school and high school. I danced all over the place: beauty pageants, nightclubs, and the state fairgrounds. I even won the Minnesota State Tap Dancing Championship in 1980. Then I joined the service and never tap danced again. However, listening to The Dancer makes me want to dust off my old tap shoes.
Here they are - all glued up and restitched together.
They were magical. I wonder if they still are….
Over twenty years after Lloyd Storey tap danced on The Dancer, Allen recorded another album with a tap dancer. This time it was a 2009 live performance featuring Maurice Chestnut. The album is Geri Allen & Timeline Live:
I think the best way to get a feel for this is to see it live. Here’s Geri Allen & Timeline with tap dancer Maurice Chestnut performing Ah Leu Chin at the 2011 Jarasum International Jazz Festival in South Korea:
In between that first Lloyd Storey’s tap dance in 1987 and Maurice Chestnut’s performance in 2009, Geri Allen recorded with so many great musicians on so many great sessions that you can’t possibly list them here. But to highlight a few: there’s the already mentioned Etudes (1988) with Haden and Motian; and, from last week’s journey, Sound Museum (1996) with Ornette Coleman - the first time an acoustic pianist recorded with Coleman since Walter Norris played on his 1958 Something Else!!!!; and finally, The Life Of A Song (2004) with Dave Holland and Jack DeJohnette, which reunites the trio that backed Betty Carter on Feed the Fire.
From The Life Of A Song, I like Black Bottom, a song in memory of Detroit, Allen’s hometown.
Allen had this to say about the title of that song:
[Black Bottom] was like the heartbeat of Detroit’s jazz scene, and probably one of the biggest all-black business communities in the country. The Paradise Theater was there, and [the district] was named Paradise Valley, but we affectionately called it Black Bottom. There was a circuit in which musicians would go from town to town, and it would be an ongoing working environment. I wanted to pay tribute to that memory, just because that’s when the music really thrived.
In the early 2000s, Allen returned to Detroit to accept a position as Associate Professor of Jazz and Contemporary Improvisation at the University of Michigan, which she held for ten years. In 2013, when her mentor Nathan Davis retired, she became the Director of Jazz Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, where she earned her master's degree in ethnomusicology in 1982. About Davis, Allen said, “Nathan Davis is my mentor, and he has supported my academic and performance career as a teaching assistant here at Pitt, and throughout my journey as a professional musician/scholar. Dr. Davis created an innovative prototype for jazz in the academy, which connects university and grassroots community together in a spirit of meaningful exchange." Up until her untimely death, Geri Allen proudly nurtured that grassroots community spirit in the Pittsburgh area.
Here’s one more for the road from one of my all-time favorite jazz albums, Etudes:
We must always remember Geri Allen.
Next week, on that Big River called Jazz, we’ll dig our paddles in and explore the waters of Geri Allen’s mentor, another great artist and educator Nathan Davis.
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Until then, keep on walking….
yeah man, Geri was terrific, and Etudes is a classic. thanks for this!