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Reminiscing in Tempo * Memories and Opinion _____      "Reminiscing in Tempo" is part of a continuing effort to provide Jerry Jazz Musician readers with unique forms of "edu-tainment." Every month (or as often as possible), Jerry Jazz Musician poses one question via e mail to a small number of prominent and diverse people. The question is designed to provoke a lively response that will potentially include the memories and/or opinion of those solicited.      Since it is not possible to know who will answer the question, the diversity of the participants will often depend on factors beyond the control of the publisher. The responses from the people who chose to participate in this edition are published below with only minor stylistic editing. No follow-up questions take place. _____ What musical recording(s) changed your life? Originally published December, 2005      I have chosen five recordings that had a major impact on me in different ways (in chronological order):      -- Bach: Inventions/Sinfonias/Partitas (Glenn Gould, piano).  I received this as a small child and was fascinated by the counterpoint, the clarity of his playing and the vibrant rhythm of the music.      -- Horowitz: Return to Carnegie Hall. I got this on my tenth birthday, and the playing was so awesome I decided then and there that there was no point in being a concert pianist.      -- Joni Mitchell: Blue. This was my first exposure to advanced non-classical harmonies, long before I heard jazz. I spent hours trying to figure out the chords she used.      -- Miles Davis: Friday and Saturday Night at the Blackhawk. Live (with Wynton Kelly, Hank Mobley, Jimmy Cobb and Paul Chambers). I loved the way Wynton and Miles interacted, the energy of the time/rhythm and the felling that "you are there" hearing it all go down. So swinging!      -- Charles Mingus: Mingus, Mingus, Mingus. When I first decided to be a jazz musician (at age eighteen, I heard this and the Miles Davis album above) and simply wanted to swing and comp like Wynton and compose like Mingus. He gets so much emotion and color out of a smallish ensemble on this one -- it's like "Ellington on acid." _____ I. Sinfonia from Partita No. 2 in C minor, BWV 826 , by Glenn Gould All I Want, by Joni Mitchell II B.S., by Charles Mingus photo Steve J. Sherman Fred Hersch * Palmetto Records recording artist; pianist; composer; recipient of a 2003 Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship for composition, a Rockefeller Fellowship for a composition residency at the Bellagio Center in Italy, and two Grammy nominations for Best Jazz Instrumental Performance Dianne Reeves * Jazz vocalist; Blue Note recording artist; awarded the Grammy for Best Jazz Vocal Performance for each of her last three recordings -- a Grammy first in any vocal category      Marvin Gaye's What's Going On.  This was the first time that I found the life I was living depicted in contemporary music. I so profoundly felt the despair, the needs, the hope, the community and the Faith in God in this remarkable recording. Marvin Gaye wondrously packaged the sentiments that everyone was sharing in our streets, churches and homes. The lyrics made you think....and then think some more as everyone was playing this record. It was the soundtrack of our lives....and it changed mine. _____ What's Going On and God Is Love, by Marvin Gaye      I know, or at least think, the side of Miles's Columbia LP Jazz Track, with "On Green Dolphin Street," "Fran Dance," and "Stella by Starlight" was the first jazz on record to make a vivid impression on me. Soon after hearing it, I even wrote a freshman English paper comparing Miles and Hemingway (fortunately lost to posterity). But I'm sure a particular pop record got to me in a similar way long before that. It's difficult for me to say what it was, because pop was something that was just there for as long as I remember, in part thanks to my Aunt Pat, who lived with us and was eleven years older than me -- a record-buying teenager when I was a very young child. I do recall being fascinated with her Hank Williams 45s, in particular "Jambalaya" and "Your Cold, Cold Heart," and trying to mimic his singing.      Now, if we were talking movies, it would be "The Night of the Hunter" and Kubrick's "The Killing." _____ On Green Dolphin Street and Fran-Dance, by Miles Davis Francis Davis * Village Voice jazz critic; contributing writer of the Atlantic Monthly; author of Jazz and its Discontents, History of the Blues, and Like Young Julian Bond * Chairman, NAACP Board of Directors      I'm not sure whether any recording "changed my life."  But music has been a constant source of pleasure as long as I can recall.       Two recordings immediately come to mind:      The first is Stevie Wonder's Songs in the Key of Life. I probably learned more about harmony, blues, groove, general song construction and producing from that album than any other actual "jazz" album. It was also inspiring just hearing the sheer breadth and scope of his output; there was a sense that the music just poured from him, so much so that I remember the original LP version I had actually contained extra single "bonus tracks" because his musical statement couldn't be contained on "merely" two full LP's (!)    The second is Horowitz: The Historic Return Carnegie Hall 1965; The 1966 Concerts. Growing up and studying classical piano, Horowitz was really the bridge, for me, between the worlds of my more structured classical studies and the world of improvisation -- Horowitz truly never played the same piece the same way twice, and his playing always possessed an astonishingly fresh and improvisational air, in particularly full force on this disc. I also always admired his incredible touch and sense of range; his control over inner voicings; his precise rhythm, all elements of which I tried (desperately!) to emulate and bring to my own playing, both classical and jazz (in fact, I eventually learned many of the pieces he chose to play during this Carnegie Hall concert in my later classical studies). Overall, I would say Horowitz definitely informed my own technical goals and approach to the instrument as much as any jazz pianist, and this LP during my formative years really set me on the right path... _____ Sir Duke, by Stevie Wonder Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17/III ">Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17/III " onclick="window.open('http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001UFOO7Y?ie=UTF8&tag=jerryjazzmusicia&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B001UFOO7Y')">Fantasie in C Major, Op. 17/III , by Vladimir Horowitz D.D. Jackson * Canadian-born pianist; composer; journalist; educator; nominated for Composer of the Year, Album of the Year, International Musician of the Year, Musician of the Year, and Pianist of the Year awards in the 2004 National Jazz Awards in Canada Jim Hall * ArtistShare recording artist; jazz guitarist; composer; arranger; recorded with Bill Evans, Paul Desmond, Ron Carter; recipient of the 2004 NEA Jazz Masters Fellowship award      When I was thirteen and playing in little groups, my friend Angelo Vienna, who played clarinet, took me to a record store where you could listen to the music before buying it. I heard Charlie Christian playing in Benny Goodman's Sextet, he played two choruses of Blues in F on "Grand Slam" -- it's a solo I'll never forget, call it a spiritual awakening. I remember thinking, "I wish I could do that." I tried to emulate his style for awhile. Later, when I was studying at the Cleveland Institute of Music, I remember being impressed by chromatic string writing -- Schoenberg's Transfigured Night comes to mind. Also, later on, almost anything by Bela Bartok, whom I still love!        Other sound impressions that linger include Sonny Rollins' solo on "St .Thomas" (the "Vanguard" LP) where he takes the last two notes the bass plays at the end of the melody -- a G down to C -- an interval of a fifth and develops it, and Bill Evans' touch and harmonies on "Spring Is Here" - it's in A flat, the first note is a G natural with an E chord underneath to make it a raised 9th ("Live at Village Vanguard" with Scott Lafaro and Paul Motian). Of course, I am also partial to 4'33" often referred to as Four and a Half Minutes of Silence by John Cage. _____ Boy Meets Goy (Grand Slam) , by Benny Goodman (Charlie Christian, guitar) Spring Is Here, by Bill Evans 4'33, by John Cage      There are so many, I cannot even attempt to list them all. But if I had to choose one, it would probably be Sonny Rollins' Saxophone Collosus. This album, perhaps more than any other, revealed to me the true power and potential of jazz improvisation. _____ Blue 7 , Strode Rode, and St. Thomas, by Sonny Rollins Joshua Redman * Warner Brothers recording artist; has performed and/or recorded with Elvin Jones, Charles Haden, Jack DeJohnette, Pat Metheny, Roy Hargrove, the Mingus Dynasty and Big Band, Red Rodney, and Paul Motion, among many others; voted Best New Artist in the 1992 Jazz Times reader's poll Nat Hentoff * Journalist; named editor of Downbeat in 1953; contributor to the Village Voice, the New Yorker, the Washington Post, Jazz Times, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Atlantic and the New Republic; author of countless books, including The War on the Bill of Rights and the Gathering Resistance, American Music Is, The Jazz Life, and Speaking Freely      When I was eleven years old, the only music that had reached me deeply, viscerally, at that point, was the often improvised singing by the cantors -- the "chazzan's," as they were called -- in the Orthodox Jewish synagogue. When I was eleven, I remember walking down one of the main streets of Boston. In those days the record stores had public address systems, and suddenly, out of one of those public address systems, I heard the music that made me shout in pleasure, and Boston boys do not shout in the street -- not back then. I rushed back into the store, the name of which I still remember, Krey's Music Shop, and I asked the clerk what the music was.  He told me it was Artie Shaw's "Nightmare."         I always meant to ask Artie about that because I used to talk to him when I was the New York editor of Downbeat, but I always forgot to ask him.  But later, in one of those big box sets that Victor put out, it was learned that he based "Nightmare" on a Jewish nigum, which is one of the thematic melodies that the chazzan's used to sing. Well, right then and there, I knew I had to find out more about this jazz thing.  Whatever money I could save during the Depression were spent on Vocalions -- or any of the other record labels of the time -- for a dollar.  It was during this time that I picked up on blues singers like Peetie Wheatstraw's "The Devil's Son in Law," Count Basie, Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, and so many others.  But it was Artie Shaw's "Nightmare" that got me immersed in jazz for the rest of my life. _____ Nightmare, by Artie Shaw      A lot of music has touched my life -- moments that even in memory evoke strong feelings, so in that respect music has been changing my life all of my life, and I'm ninety-three years old. I remember the reprimands I received as a youngster when I strayed too far down the street following the bands playing on the flatbed trucks coming through my New Orleans neighborhood to drum up business for a fish fry. And I still tear up when I think of Ben Webster playing "Danny Boy" at the Onyx Club (I was playing bass and it was just the two of us -- Stuff and Jimmy took a break); or Joe Williams singing "Here's To Life."        But your question is specifically about recordings that changed my life. Recordings of composers such as Delius, Sebelius, Bach, Debussy, and all the romantics, I heard for the first time at the home of Stuff Smith's lady friend, who was white, very rich and lived in the Hyde Park area on the Southside of Chicago. After work at the Garrick Stage Bar in downtown Chicago, Stuff, Jimmy Jones and I would go to her home to relax and listen to classical music recordings. Dorothy had state of the art recording playback equipment, and a library of all the classical composers' music of the past and present. Listening to this music changed my life in that it made me appreciate the music of these great composers and enhanced my knowledge and appreciation of this music and the relationship it had to the pop and jazz music of the day. It increased my abilities to better understand the function of the instrument I had chosen to play. It also prepared me for my future experience of playing with George Shearing, whose arrangements contained excerpts from the classical composers, especially Johann Sebastian Bach.        Music, live and recorded, has blessed my life. _____ Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun, by Debussy Symphony No. 1 in E minor Op.39, by Sibelius John Levy * Bassist; recorded with Stuff Smith, Erroll Garner and George Shearing; artist manager for Nat and Cannonball Adderley, Shearing, Joe Williams, Nancy Wilson and Wes Montgomery; co-author (with wife Devra Hall) of Men, Women, and Girl Singers: My Life As a Musician Turned Talent Manager; named as a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Master in January 2006 John Leland * New York Times reporter; former editor-in-chief of Details; an original columnist at SPIN magazine; author of Hip: The History, a New York Times Notable Book for 2004      I don't look for recordings to change my life, though some have done so, and not always to my betterment. While many fine records have enriched my life, the few that changed my life have been almost universally poor. I think great records can rouse us to meet them as intellectual, emotional and artistic challenges; life-changing records, in my experience, have appealed to baser appetites, like calls to run away and join the circus, in its many modern forms.      That said, I cherish every moment I've spent inside John Coltrane's first Live at the Village Vanguard and Eric Dolphy's Live at the Five Spot, two performances I was too young to see, but not by much. _____ Chasin' The Trane, by John Coltrane Like Someone In Love, by Eric Dolphy Next edition's question: What recording session do you wish you could have witnessed? Participants include, among others, Herman Leonard, Ingrid Jensen, Lalo Schifrin, David Liebman, Doug Ramsey, Jane Ira Bloom, and Buddy Bregman. * "Reminiscing in Tempo" Home Page

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