Lost: Chet Baker

Although two well-known profiles of Chet Baker take their titles from romantic ballads prominent in the Baker repertoire: James Gavin's book, Deep in a Dream, and Bruce Weber's film, Let's Get Lost, these titles can have another meaning as well.   As can be seen from the photos above showing Chet early and then late in his career-about 30-35 years apart, time was not good to the trumpeter/singer.   In addition to the natural aging process, some portion of Baker's physical transfiguration was the result of the fact that he was lost in the dreamland of heroin addiction a significant percentage of time.  After reading Gavin's biography, I think that any profile of Baker could also borrow the title of Dan Brown's thriller, Angels & Demons.  Early in his career, many considered his appearance angelic and throughout his career, even at times when he was deep in his addiction, Baker could create almost angelic music.  On the other hand,  Baker had demons aplenty to deal with and his behavior was often much more demonic than angelic.  Featured to the right are
Gavin's biography and a companion cd compilation of Baker's music.










Baker first achieved fame when he became part of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet and this group made a series of sides in 1952-53.  Baker is best known for his rendition of what at the time was a little known ballad, "My Funny Valentine."  Baker would go on to record this song many times both as an instrumentalist and as a vocalist and some would say that he came to "own" it.



Although the Mulligan quartet would come to regarded as one of the great exemplars of West Coast/Cool jazz, it would not survive Mulligan's arrest for drug possession and the clash of personalities of the two principles.  The Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings includes the output of this short-lived ensemble in its "Core Collection."  A 2-cd, 42-track set with all the quartet's recordings is available, as is a "Best Of" compilation that includes 15 songs.














Baker would continue to record with many of the prominent West Coast jazz artists throughout the rest of the 1950's.  He developed an understated trumpet style comparable to Miles Davis, and which many derided as derivative of Davis.  Baker first recorded vocals were on Chet Baker Sings.  With a repertoire limited to ballads and medium tempo numbers, his singing was also laid-back and understated. While some were dismissive of his vocal efforts, others found them to be seductive.  Biographer Gavin argued that with his matinee-idol looks and distinctive style, Baker attracted both women and a strong following of gay men





By the 1960s Baker had progressed from pot head to heroin junkie.  Throughout the remainder of his career and life he would be constantly on the move searching out his next fix and often trying to stay one step ahead of the law.  In 1966 he was so severely beaten in a drug-related incident that he lost his front teeth and had to relearn to play the trumpet.  It was in this period that he also began to play the flugelhorn. Baker was much more popular in Europe than in the U.S. and he spent much of his last 25 years on that continent.  He was so rootless that he didn't even want a bank account and demanded that all payments for recordings and performances be in cash.  As would be expected his recordings from this period are wildly uneven, but even in the depth of his addiction, he could produce some highly regarded music.  In 1985, along with pianist Paul Bley, Baker released Diane, an album consisting mostly of ballads.  With just two instrumentalists, there was no place to hide your errors.  The video below demonstrates that Baker could still produce some beautiful music.
















Remarkably just a few weeks before his death, and at a time when he was in terrible health, Baker presented a concert in Germany that would produce a two-volume recording billed as The Last Great Recording.  This concert showcased Baker in a variety of ensembles ranging from quartet to big band to full orchestra and largely lived up to its billing.



Not long after this concert, Baker's body was found on an Amsterdam sidewalk outside the hotel where he was staying.  Many unanswered questions remain regarding Baker's death and it has even become the subject of a mystery novel, Looking for Chet Baker, by Bill Moody.

The Greatest Voice You've Probably Never Heard: Johnny Hartman

Despite winning accolades from folks who should know, like Tony Bennett and Ella Fitzgerald, Johnny Hartman never came close to becoming a household name.  In the extensive liner notes to The Johnny Hartman Collection 1947-1972, well-respected critic Will Friedwald characterized Hartman, with his "deep and sensual" baritone as "one of the greatest interpreters of love songs that ever lived." 

Raised in Chicago, Hartman began his professional career at 17 with the Earl "Fatha" Hines big band after winning an amateur contest that offered a $25 prize and a week's engagement with Hines.  "Fatha" was impressed enough that Hartman continued with him for a year. Early in his career, Hartman also sang with Errol Garner and Dizzy Gillespie.  Known throughout his career primarily as a ballad singer, the pairing with Gillespie resulted in some "interesting" juxtapositions between singer and instrumentalists.

Hartman made his first recordings under his own name in 1947, but it would be another decade before he realized much success at all.  Two related stumbling blocks seem to have confused record company executives and interfered with his popularity.  First there was the issue of whether Hartman was a "jazz" or "pop" singer and what kind of material to have him record.  Record producers also had a hard time figuring out how to arrange and orchestrate to best showcase Hartman.  In his book, Jazz Singing (1992), Friedwald argued convincingly that Hartman needed a trio plus one master soloist to "challenge him, inspire him, and keep him on the level."  It was not until 1956 that Bethlehem presented him in this context on Songs from the Heart.  The rhythm section consisted of Ralph Sharon (who would later collaborate for many years with Tony Bennett), Jay Cave (b) and Christy Febbo (d) while Howard McGhee provided the solos on trumpet. 



The peak of Hartman's career came with the 1963 album that critic Scott Yanow claimed made Hartman immortal, John Coltrane and Johnny Hartman on Impulse.  Not only is this the album for which Hartman is best know, I believe it also marks the only time that Coltrane recorded with a vocalist.  The two featured performers are joined by Coltrane's standout rhythm section: McCoy Tyner (p), Jimmy Garrison (b), Elvin Jones (d).  Although all the songs on this album are outstanding, Scott Yanow considers the renditions of Billy Strayhorn's "Lush Life" and "My One and Only Love" as "definitive."




Bob Thiele produced the Coltrane collaboration and would then go on to produce four more Hartman albums: I Just Dropped by to Say Hello (1963), The Voice that Is (1964), Unforgettable Songs by Johnny Hartman and I Love Everybody (both 1966).  Presented below is "Stairway to the Stars" from the Hello album.  The tenor soloist here is Illinois Jacquet. Will Friedwald called the five albums produced by Thiele, the "most consistently excellent body of work in Hartman's career."



Despite the excellence of Hartman's mid-60s output, this was the era of the British Invasion and Rock 'n Roll was king.  Like so many other singers of standards, Hartman found recording contracts harder and harder to come by.  Also like many standard singers, Hartman spent much of his time overseas in the late '60s and the '70s.  He was in the process of making something of a comeback in the early '80s when he was diagnosed with lung cancer and was forced to quit performing.  He died in 1983 at the age of 60.

Although Hartman himself didn't live long enough to succeed with a comeback, his music received a  boost 15 years after his death when Clint Eastwood featured several Hartman numbers in the soundtrack to The Bridges of Madison County.  More recently,  jazz singer Kurt Elling released a live "re-imagining" of the Hartman-Coltrane collaboration, Dedicated to You: Kurt Elling Sings the Music of Coltrane and Hartman.  For this effort Elling won the 2010 Grammy for Best Vocal Jazz Album, the first male to do so since 1993.

Round and Round About Midnight

The history of jazz is filled with unique individuals. Possibly no one was more unique than Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-1982).  His personality and his music were like no other.  According to his biography on allaboutjazz.com, "With the arrival of Thelonious Sphere Monk, modern music-let alone modern culture-simply hasn't been the same."  Monk was a contemporary of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, and along with them, was often credited as a founder of be-bop.  Monk's style, however, was quite different from Parker's and Gillespie's.  Where they blew fast and furious, Monk's style was spare and economical.  He utilized syncopation even more than most jazz musicians; one reviewer described his playing as angular.  Monk has also been considered one of the great jazz composers.  Although many of his songs have become jazz standards, his "'Round Midnight" is probably the most recorded jazz composition ever.

Monk first wrote the song in the late 1930s or early '40s.  In 1944 Cootie Williams and his orchestra recorded a somewhat modified version of the song.  How much Williams modified the song is anybody's guess, but he was given a share of the copyright.  A few years later Bernie Hanighen added lyrics and his name is also listed as co-composer.  Although given no official credit, Dizzy Gillespie added an introduction and cadenza in 1947 and these have been included in most subsequent recordings.

Monk would record 'Round Midnight numerous times over the years.  The first video that follows is an early version, a 1947 small-group recording for Riverside.  The second video is solo Monk recorded in 1969. The video quality is not the best, but the audio allows you to experience some pure Monk piano.  So many Monk recordings are available that it hard to know where to start.  This recording of his early work with Blue Note is probably as good a place as any.





I first became aware of the song when I purchased the lp, Miles Davis' Greatest Hits, while I was in high school.  This version, based on Gillespie's variation, and showcasing John Coltrane as well as Davis, remains one of the standard versions.  Personally, Davis' muted trumpet intro and Coltrane's solo never get old.
















Two strikingly different vocal versions of 'Round Midnight appear in the next two videos.  The first is Julie London with full orchestration from 1960.  Ella Fitzgerald then appears in a live recording with the Oscar Peterson Trio in 1961.






"Round Midnight hasn't gone out of fashion.  In the 1980's Linda Ronstadt used it as the title song in one of the three albums of standards that she made with Nelson Riddle.



Also during that decade a movie named after the song was released to critical acclaim.  One of the stars of the movie was tenor man, Dexter Gordon, whose version appeared in the movie and on the soundtrack album.














Last, and maybe least, in my opinion anyway, is a recent version by Amy Winehouse, British bad girl and neo-soul singer.

Stardust Melodies

With more than 1500 recordings, Hoagy Carmichael's "Stardust" is one of the most recorded songs in the history of recorded music.  Inspired by Bix Beiderbecke, Carmichael wrote the song as a medium-to-up tempo instrumental, and he first recorded "Star Dust," as the title was written then, in 1927.  Mills Music published the music as "Stardust," in January, 1929.  The publishing house subsequently contracted Mitchell Parish to add lyrics and published this version later that year.

The first commercially-successful recording of "Stardust," that of Louis Armstrong in 1931, remains one of the most well-known and popular.  Ken Burns featured this recording prominently in his documentary, Jazz, and Armstrong biographer, James Lincoln Collier described it as "... the epitome of pop songs in a great age of pop songs."




"Stardust" was frequently recorded during the big band era.  I am aware of two versions by the Benny Goodman orchestra, one up-tempo along with a slower version.  The flip side of the 1936 Goodman version presented below is a Tommy Dorsey version of the same song. Goodman also recorded it in a small group session featuring electric guitar pioneer, Charlie Christian.  Arguably the definitive big band recording is the one that Artie Shaw made in 1940.





"Stardust" continued to be a popular choice for the "crooners," both male and female, of the '50s & '60s.  Nat King Cole made a hit recording in 1956, and Frank Sinatra recorded a remarkable version in 1961.  Sinatra's version is unusual because the introduction supplies few hints of the song's melody and he sings only the verse of the song and omits the chorus altogether.





The lyrics of "Stardust" include the phrase "leaving me a song that will not die."  It's doubtful that Mitchell Parish realized that those words would come to characterize his lyrics and the music for which he wrote them.  Although composed over 80 years ago, "Stardust" continues to be recorded by artists from all sorts of genres as well as artists who weren't even gleams in their grandfather's eyes when the song was written. 

Although usually considered a pop or jazz song, Willie Nelson countrified "Stardust" up a bit in the late '70s. The final video is crooner reincarnate, Michael Buble'.  





If you wish to learn more about Hoagy Carmichael and all the other wonderful songs he wrote, check out the fine Hoagy Carmichael biography, Stardust Melody, by Richard Sudhalter.
In the early '90s the Indiana Historical Society in collaboration with the Smithsonian released The Classic Hoagy Carmichael, a 3-CD set with booklet of recordings of many of Carmichael's songs recorded over the years by various artists.  Although currently out of print, used copies can be found easily enough.  The 3 CDs contain six versions of "Stardust."

Survivor: Anita O'Day

As she had plenty of both during her life and musical career, Anita O'Day appropriately titled her memoir, High Times, Hard Times.  Born Anita Belle Colton in Chicago in 1919, she had a tough childhood: an absentee father, a physically proximate, but emotional distant mother, and the poverty endemic during the Depression years.  She left school early and got her start singing for audiences via the dance marathon/walkathon circuits so popular during the Depression.  At some point during this period she changed her name to O'Day (one story is that O'Day is pig latin for what she hoped to make lots of: dough).  She was eventually hired on as the girl singer for the Gene Krupa big band and achieved considerable popular, if not financial success (although the song was a million seller, O'Day was payed a flat fee for her performance, and received no royalties),  with "Let Me Off Uptown."  The song was also a something of a cultural landmark as it paired her with African American trumpeter Roy Eldridge, a controversial move during the Jim Crow years.





Following her stint with Krupa, O'Day also sang with Woody Herman and Stan Kenton.  With the later she recorded another million seller, "And Her Tears Flowed Like Wine.  As the big band era waned Anita went solo and had up and down levels of success through the late '40's and early '50's.  In 1956, she signed with jazz  impresario,  Norman Granz's new Verve label.  During this period O'Day achieved some of her greatest musical successes. Granz recorded her with both large and small combos.  Among her notable albums on Verve for Granz were Anita Sings the Most, which paired her with the Oscar Peterson Trio along with her long-time drummer/collaborator/drug supplier, John Poole.  Retitled Sings for Oscar, this album has been re-released on one disc with Pick Yourself Up, which the authors of the Penguin Guide to Jazz Recordings deem O'Days "iconic" album. 



 Anita received lots of attention in 1958 with the release of Jazz on a Summer's Day, a documentary about the previous year's Newport Jazz Festival that captured (unbeknownst to the singer) her take on Sweet Georgia Brown and Tea for Two.  Although not as widely acclaimed as some of her contemporaries, this performance demonstrated O'Day's creativity, swing, and energy were on par with anyone's.  Throughout her memoirs, O'Day consistently refers to herself as a song stylist rather than a singer.  This performance makes obvious what she meant.







 There were lots of high times of another sort, as it was during the 1950's that she developed a heroin addiction that would plague her for 14 years.  O'Day recounted her ups and downs in her autobiography, High Times, Hard Times, which was first published in 1981.  It is a "tell all" account, and although there are some less than kind comments about others, most of the dirt that is dug is about the author.














If you want to know more about Anita O'Day, but don't want to take the time read her autobiography, she was the subject of a biographical film, Anita O'Day: The Life of a Jazz Singer released in 2009.
O'Day continued to perform and record almost to the day of her death in 2006.  Her last album was released in 2007 and was fittingly titled, Indestructible.

RIP Abbey Lincoln

Maybe not a giant, but the jazz world lost a pretty large figure last month in the passing of Abbey Lincoln.  Born Anna Marie Woolridge in Chicago in 1930 and reared in rural Michigan,  Anna Marie moved to L.A. to begin her professional career as a lounge singer.  Around 1955 she changed her name to Abbey Lincoln, and during that year she released her debut album, “Abbey Lincoln's Affair. A Story of a Girl in Love.”  Along with Julie London, featured previously, in this blog, Lincoln appeared in the Jayne Mansfield/rock 'n roll vehicle, The Girl Can't Help It. Unlike Julie London, whose style didn't change much over the course of her recording career, Abbey Lincoln's music varied greatly through the years.

The video below is from The Girl Can't Help It, and features Abbey in a gown previously worn by Marilyn Monroe.



Later in the 1950s Lincoln  began to collaborate with legendary drummer Max Roach (whom she later married) and moved in a much "jazzier" direction.  One of her important albums of this period was Abbey is Blue, which featured, in addition to Roach, other prominent jazz musicians of the time, including Stanley Turrentine, Wynton Kelly, and Philly Joe Jones.  Although the album included some "standards," e.g., "Lost in the Stars" (Kurt Weill & Maxwell Anderson) & "Come Sunday," (Duke Ellington) this is not a pop album.  

Abbey singing "Come Sunday" from Abbey is Blue:






In 1960 Lincoln and Roach collaborated the groundbreaking jazz and civil rights album, “We Insist! Freedom Now Suite”, but during the rest of that decade she concentrated on a semi-successful acting career.  After divorcing Roach in 1970, she spent most of the '70's honing her songwriting skills and did not release another album in the U.S. until 1979's People in Me."  Her profile remained low during the 1980s until she signed with Verve in the early 1990s, where she remained for the rest of her recording career.  Her last album for Verve, Abbey Sings Abbey, released in 2007, was a retrospective and reworking of some of her earlier recordings.


The next two videos are from Abbey's Verve period. The first is her composition, "Down Here Below," from A Turtle's Dream, and features Kenny Barron on piano and Charlie Haden on bass subtly supplemented by strings.  The second video is "Windmills of your Mind" from her next to last album, Over the Years, which the Amazon reviewer suggested might have been the best album of her career.  This song features her rhythm section: Brandon McCune (p), John Ormond (b), and Jaz Sawyer (d) plus Joe Lovano on tenor.

The Problem with Categories: Madeleine Peyroux

Probably no one personifies the difficulties in trying to categorize music more than Madeleine Peyroux (pronounced like the country).  Her voice has been compared to Billie Holiday.  She co-wrote most of the songs on her latest album, but she has covered songs written or popularized by everyone from Hank Williams to Frank Sinatra to Leonard Cohen to Bessie Smith and covered Edith Piaff in French.  She is profiled on AllAboutJazz.com, but records for a label mostly known for bluegrass and "roots" music.  She's even been know to sport a top hat.

Peyroux's background is as varied as her music. Born in Athens, GA, she spent her early years in Brooklyn, Southern California, & Paris.  Her music career began on the streets of the French capital, and she later toured Europe with the Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band.  

Her debut album, Dreamland, released in the U.S. in 1996 sold an impressive 200,000 copies and was received with critical acclaim as well.  In the wake of the success of Dreamland, Peyroux was in great demand on the festival circuit and as an opening act for some big-name artists.  Rather than rushing back into the recording studio, however, she waited until 2004 to release her next album, Careless Love.  In subsequent years, she has released two more albums for Rounder Records, Half the Perfect World and Bare Bones.  All three of these Rounder albums were produced by veteran Larry Klein, perhaps best known as Joni Mitchell's producer and ex-husband.  Although Peyroux's music is difficult to pigeonhole, one thing for certain is that she is a song stylist; she applies her own unique stamp to all her songs, even ones that have been recorded many times before.  One of my favorite songs on Careless Love is Hank Williams' "Weary Blues."  She changes the phrasing, slows down the tempo, and gives the song a "bluesier" feel.  If you heard the two versions and didn't pay attention to the lyrics, you might not recognize them as the same songs.





This next video is an old one, featuring Madeleine covering Billie Holiday in her street musician days with the Lost Wandering Blues & Jazz Band.  The song appears in a little more polished version on Dreamland.