The Faces of Jazz

Early Sunday Morning in the Village....

Early Sunday Morning has always been one of my favorite paintings. It was also one of my favorite times in the Village.

In 1930, when Washington Square North resident Edward Hopper finished this strangely haunting painting of simple low-rise buildings, he recorded it in his ledger as “Seventh Avenue Shops.” However, many believe that the distinctive cornices, barber shop pole, fire hydrant, and morning shadows are in fact on Bleecker Street, just west of Carmen Street.

It was here in Greenwich Village that I came “face to face” with the sound I had been hearing since my early Fred Astaire, James Bond, and other movie soundtrack days.

I was extremely lucky to live so close to NYC while in college. This proximity helped cultivate my jazz, art, and architectural education. Walking the streets of Greenwich Village, exploring the shops, and admiring the architecture became a habit that provided many sites to go along with the sounds of jazz. As an early riser, I could get down there before the action started and watch the Village wake up.

As I think back on it now, I hear something like this one from the Skipper playing in my mind:

In the spring of 1983, I really started to go to NYC with the express purpose of seeing a jazz show. I would get the Village Voice and check out the jazz calendars. Then I’d circle the dates of shows I wanted to see. If I could get leave, I’d head down on Saturday afternoon. As I recall, the first live jazz show I ever went to was the Nat Adderley Quintet at Sweet Basil. And it changed my life….

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Sweet Basil

I still remember the nervous energy of that night. I remember sitting there among all the older people feeling somewhat out of place. I just minded my own business - I was on a mission. The Nat Adderley Quintet was loaded with jazz legends with deep roots in Cannonball Adderley’s Quintet, as you can read from the program below. But that night, I think it was Jimmy Cobb who I really wanted to see.

I had run into Cannonball Adderley from Miles’ Kind of Blue and Cannonball’s brother Nat from Cannonball Enroute. Jimmy Cobb plays drums on both of these albums. I like this one from that LP:

That show knocked me out. Not in any hurry to leave, I just sat there watching the musicians pack up their gear and leave the stage. It seems like drummers always leave the stage last. I walked over to Jimmy Cobb and struck up a conversation. I asked if he’d sign my program.

We talked for a while and I left. During the subway ride back to the Soldier’s, Sailor’s, and Seamen’s Club, I was still in awe of the spirituality of live jazz. Looking back on it now, I think I experienced what I will call the Baptism of Jazz.

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In his book, Their Heads are Green and Their Hands are Blue: Scenes from the Non-Christian Worlds, Paul Bowles talks about what the French call ‘le bapteme de solitude’ or the unique sensation one feels when alone in the Sahara. He writes that once you go out you either “shiver and hurry back…or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you.” Here is the complete text from which I am speaking. You can go Here and then click back to read along with Paul Bowles as he reads the quote with music produced by Jazz bassist Bill Laswell.

“Immediately when you arrive in Sahara, for the first or the tenth time, you notice the stillness. An incredible, absolute silence prevails outside the towns; and within, even in busy places like the markets, there is a hushed quality in the air, as if the quiet were a conscious force which, resenting the intrusion of sound, minimizes and disperses sound straightaway. Then there is the sky, compared to which all other skies seem fainthearted efforts. Solid and luminous, it is always the focal point of the landscape. At sunset, the precise, curved shadow of the earth rises into it swiftly from the horizon, cutting into light section and dark section. When all daylight is gone, and the space is thick with stars, it is still of an intense and burning blue, darkest directly overhead and paling toward the earth, so that the night never really goes dark.

You leave the gate of the fort or town behind, pass the camels lying outside, go up into the dunes, or out onto the hard, stony plain and stand awhile alone. Presently, you will either shiver and hurry back inside the walls, or you will go on standing there and let something very peculiar happen to you, something that everyone who lives there has undergone and which the French call 'le bapteme de solitude.' It is a unique sensation, and it has nothing to do with loneliness, for loneliness presupposes memory. Here in this wholly mineral landscape lighted by stars like flares, even memory disappears; nothing is left but your own breathing and the sound of your heart beating. A strange, and by no means pleasant, process of reintegration begins inside you, and you have the choice of fighting against it, and insisting on remaining the person you have always been, or letting it take its course. For no one who has stayed in the Sahara for a while is quite the same as when he came.

...Perhaps the logical question to ask at this point is: Why go? The answer is that when a man has been there and undergone the baptism of solitude he can't help himself. Once he has been under the spell of the vast luminous, silent country, no other place is quite strong enough for him, no other surroundings can provide the supremely satisfying sensation of existing in the midst of something that is absolute. He will go back, whatever the cost in time or money, for the absolute has no price.”

After that show at the Sweet Basil, I was under the spell of Jazz - I had been baptized by Jazz.

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Blue Note

The Modern Jazz Quartet was another show I circled. As I said last week, one of the first albums I pulled out of the Cadet Library cases was bags & trane. So I was already well aware of Milt Jackson. From that album, I learned of the famous quartet he played in: The Modern Jazz Quartet.

That’s Milt in the upper right corner.

His playing on songs like this is mesmerizing:

So in March of 1983, I headed down to the Blue Note to see them.

John Lewis and Milt Jackson blew me away. After the show, they were hanging around the stage so I went up and asked for their autograph.

That night I got to see live the “funky xylophone-thing”, the vibraphone, that I had heard so often in the “Bond Sound”. With Milt Jackson at the helm, it was awesome. I never became a huge Modern Jazz Quartet fan, but I did continue to follow Milt Jackson.

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Village Vanguard

In September 1983, my buddy, Jay Sams, and I went down to see Keith Jarrett’s Trio at the Village Vanguard. He was playing with legends Gary Peacock on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. This was the famous line-up for their Standards Vol. 1 LP.

We walked down the stairs into the club…

One of the things that strikes you about The Vanguard is how tiny it is.

We sat down and ordered some drinks. Soon the trio started up. About halfway through the first set a couple walked in and sat at the table directly to our right and slightly behind us. Right away, we recognized them as Mick Jagger and Jerry Hall. At the first intermission, Jerry Hall left the table for the restroom. Jay noticed a pair of black Wayfarers on the table, just like the ones he had. He leaned over and asked Mick if he could trade Wayfarers. Mick laughed and said, “I would, but they’re not mine. They’re Jerry’s.” We all laughed and went about our business.

Here’s a great article about the Village Vanguard.

The Vanguard has been a landmark for great, live music. Here’s one of my favorites:

The bassist on this song is the great Scott LaFaro. This was his last recording. He died in a car accident just ten days after this live date.

Because I love the song and it brings in the chatter of a live performance so well, here is another:

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Fat Tuesday’s

After I graduated in May 1984, I took extended leave for 30 days before I reported to Airborne school in Georgia. I stayed with a friend in Brooklyn. I saw that Dizzy Gillespie was playing at Fat Tuesday’s. So off I went. It was another great show.

Like I normally do after a show, I sat and watched the musicians leave the stage, no hurry to leave. All the musicians disappeared, but one, the piano player. He sat at the piano messing around a little. Then he got up and walked over to the booth where I was sitting. He simply stuck out his hand and introduced himself, “Hi, I’m Hank Jones.” We talked for a while and then he said, “Would you like to meet Dizzy?”

I followed him behind the stage to a door. He knocked and as he slowly opened it, a huge billow of smoke came out from the room - I’m talking gigantic. I noticed this was like the cleaning closet, as there were supplies on the shelves along the walls, mops and buckets, and a single light bulb hanging from a string from the ceiling. The band members were all sitting on stools huddled around a big box smoking stogies and playing poker. Hank leaned down and said to Dizzy, “Hey Dizzy, I’d like you to meet my friend, Tyler.” Dizzy turned and looked up at me. With a big cigar in his mouth and a bigger grin, he said, “Hi Tyler, I’m Dizzy Gillespie.” He shook my hand. I told him I loved the show, especially their version of Stardust. I asked for his autograph and he wrote this.

I thanked him. He smiled again and then turned around and got right back to the card game. Hank closed the door, and we walked back to the booth to talk a little more. I asked for his autograph too.

I would find out later just exactly who Hank Jones was. I can’t believe I had just met one of the greatest jazz pianists of all time - and I didn’t even know it!! An interesting side note, he played piano when Marilyn Monroe sang Happy Birthday, Mr. President to JFK.

I often wonder why he ever came up to me that night. I suppose it may have reminded him of himself in his younger days fresh into New York from Detroit, when he hung out at clubs listening to the musicians to learn about a new style of music, BeBop. But that’s another story….

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Next week, our journey takes us on a detour to look at Earl “Fatha” Hines and Gerry Mulligan and some modern jazz roots. Now that we have come “face to face” with jazz, I think it would be fun to shine light on a few places where the modern jazz sound came from….

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If you like what you’ve been reading and hearing so far on our journey, please share my newsletter with others - just hit the “Share” button at the bottom of the page.

Feel free to contact me at any time to talk shop. I welcome and encourage that….

Until then, keep on walking….