JULY, 2021
HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW
ELECTRONIC EDITION: Now free to email subscribers and supported by tasteful, music-oriented advertising with a unique news-format approach.
A monthly guide to early rock, blues, country, folk, and traditional jazz in the Seattle area and beyond.
Editor and Publisher: Doug Bright
Email: subscribe@heritagemusicreview.com
CONTENTS—JULY, 2021
THE GRAMMYS: A ROOTS MUSIC REPORT
part 1: Traditional Jazz and Vintage Pop
WHAT'S IN STORE: News From The Musical Marketplace
CHECKIN, OUT THE SOUNDS: JULY MUSIC CALENDAR ――――――――――
THE GRAMMYS: A ROOTS MUSIC REPORT
part 1: Traditional Jazz and Vintage Pop
By Doug Bright
In 1958 the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences established an annual award to honor the record industry's highest creative achievements in a wide range of musical styles. There were 28 award categories then, but as the years passed and the music industry became increasingly specialized, so did the awards. Today, 63 years later, there are 83 categories, and this year's awards shed interesting light on the strength and scope of American traditional music in the recording industry. The following developments will be of particular interest to readers of Heritage Music Review.
Traditional Jazz and Vintage Pop
It was 1990 when 21-year-old Harry Connick Jr. burst into the national spotlight, following up his musical contribution to the blockbuster film
When Harry Met Sally.
with an album of original songs with big-band arrangements in the best Sinatra tradition called
Thirty years later, his triumphant return to that time-honored formula earned him a Grammy nomination once again for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album. This release, marking his debut on the historic Verve label, is entitled
Jrue Love:
A Celebration of Cole Porter.
While most classic pop crooners, both past and present, have delegated everything but the lead vocal tracks to others, Connick has once more opted to write the orchestrations and lead the band himself, and the genius that characterized his initial effort is just as evident here. The opening track, a briskly swinging revival of Porter's commentary on the original Roaring Twenties,
feels eerily prophetic today and includes a little-known vintage verse. As you might expect, "Just One of Those Things"
is similarly paced, and Connick's piano solo features the kind of dense block chords that call
to mind.
Lesser-known, moderately paced numbers like
"I Concentrate On You"
and
"Mind If I Make Love To You"
take Connick into a baritone range that's especially reminiscent of his hero Frank Sinatra, adding to the band a richly orchestrated string section of the kind that graced his
We Are In Love
album.
The same could be said of the much more familiar
"In The Still of The Night",
but on this track, Connick's voice also soars effortlessly to the height of a tenor range that Sinatra generally didn't even attempt.
The
album's
most intriguing surprise is Connick's frantically paced and Latin-grooved solo piano rendition of "Begin The Beguine",
giving a nod to everything from
Floyd Cramer's
early-Sixties country style back to Garner before the band kicks in for the big finish at normal swing tempo. Speaking of surprises, Connick's approach to "True Love"
is likely to come as a shock of seismic proportion to those who, like me, view Bing Crosby and Grace Kelley's rendition from the 1956 musical
High Society
as the standard of comparison. Connick's swaggering big-band swing shouldn't work at all, but his use of a strategically placed string section on the most lyrical passages manages to snatch victory from the jaws of abomination, and incredibly, the song's emotional depth isn't compromised after all. It's just one more example of how well Harry Connick understands this music.
Another nominee for Best Traditional Pop Album was the soundtrack from the 2019 biographical film
Judy
starring Renée Zellweger as the not-quite-gracefully-aging Judy Garland. Garland's two-disc
Judy at Carnegie Hall
package,
recorded in 1961, had been heralded as one of the great performances of all time and took two Grammy awards for the year, but by the time she appeared at London's Talk of the Town in 1968, her voice was thinner and less consistent, and it is this stage of her life and career that Zellweger sympathetically and faithfully evokes in the film and soundtrack, recapturing both the low-range smokiness and the remaining sustained-note resonance that characterized Garland''s voice in later years.
On the Garland classic "Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas",
Zellweger is joined by wide-ranging singerstsongwriter Rufus Wainwright, a lifelong Garland admirer whose own tribute album,
Rufus Does Judy At Carnegie Hall
had been nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album eleven years earlier. Wainwright's album of original songs,
Unfolow The Rules
was also nominated for this year's award in that category, but its style, however melodic and sumptuously arranged, has more to do with the kind of contemporary pop-rock that began in the Seventies than anything that readers of this publication would categorize as traditional pop.
The surprise winner of the category was
American Standard
an album in which James Taylor tries to apply his well-known folk-based approach to the great American songbook. Most of the time, despite the tasty, guitar-driven acoustic instrumentation, his vocal style simply doesn't fit, but there are surprising exceptions.
"Teach me Tonight" Is given a gentle Latin setting, and the warm background harmony of the horn section adds a subtle jazz-pop touch. Stranger still, Taylor's waltztime adaptation of the usually swung "Almost Like Being In Love"
actually works, enhanced by well-placed vocal background harmony and even a contemporary pop-flavored soprano sax track. His syncopated phrasing of "Pennies From Heaven"
combines with the instrumentation to place the song squarely in swing mode where it belongs, and his inclusion of the all-but-forgotten introductory verse shows a deeper understanding of this music than his reputation would suggest.
Indeed, Taylor does best in this area with songs like "God Bless The Child"
that allow him to flavor his vocal delivery with a trace of swing, blues, or gospelesque soul. Nevertheless, this
album
lacks the consistency of Harry Connick's candidate, which should have taken the award in this critic's not-so-humble opinion.
What's The Hurry
is an appropriate title for New Orleans native Kenny Washington's first studio package, nominated for Best Vocal Jazz Album. While most artists use the recording process as a vehicle for launching their careers, Washington sang and played saxophone in military bands before settling in the San Francisco Bay area in the mid-1990's. He's been active there since then, appeared on several occasions at New York's Lincoln Center, and cut two live albums, but this is his first solo studio effort.
The
album
showcases Washington's supple tenor voice and soul-jazz style with an impressive variety of material and accompaniment settings. It begins prophetically with the early-Sixties jazz-pop standard
"The Best Is Yet To Come"
sung and swung with easygoing confidence by Washington and his primary rhythm section: pianist Josh Nelson, bassist Gary Brown, and drummer Lorca Hart.
For the classic ballad
"Stars Fell On Alabama",
Washington and his rhythm section are graced by a rich, low-register tenor saxophone track from Victor Goines, who contributes a beautiful clarinet solo to the brisk Latin groove of
"No More Blues"
and harmonizes sensitively with trombonist Jeff Cressman. Washington is at his soulful best on
"Ain't Got Nothin' But The Blues",
which features fine solos from Nelson and guest trumpeter Mike Olmos. Another standout is
"Bewitched, Bothered and Bewildered",
an intimate piano-voice duet in which Washington revives the all-but-forgotten introductory verse.
At the opposite end of the tempo spectrum is another duet: a brisk treatment of
"Sweet Georgia Brown"
with acoustic bassist Dan Fiezli, a dexterous and inventive soloist. On this one and an equally fast-moving take on
"S'wonderful",
a duet with electric guitarist Jeff Massanari, Washington shows off his scatting skills and, on the latter selection, proves he can whistle as jazzily as he sings. Massanari's rich chordal accompaniment and smart solos also grace another duet,
"I've Got The World On a String",
which Washington has performed in shows paying tribute to Frank Sinatra. Unfortunately for old-school listeners, the
album
didn't win in its category, but it's sure to help Kenny Washington get to the next level of national awareness.
The real prize of this jazz-and-pop report comes from Resonance Records, a division of a Los Angeles-based non-profit called Rising Jazz Stars Foundation. Entitled
Hittin' The Ramp
it consists of seven CD's or ten vinyl LP's documenting the beginning of the legendary Nat King Cole's career before he joined Capitol Records in 1944 and achieved superstardom. It was released in November 2019 to commemorate the centennial of his birth.
It opens with
and
"Stompin' At The Panama", recorded and released by Decca in 1936 with Cole taking dazzling piano solos in a horn-driven combo led by his older brother, bassist Eddie Cole. The rest of the set follows the evolution of his King Cole Trio, organized in 1937 with guitarist Oscar Moore and bassist Wesley Prince
The first offerings we hear from this period are recordings made by a company called Standard Transcriptions and circulated exclusively to radio stations. Even at this early stage, Cole and Moore engage in precisely arranged, razor-sharp piano-guitar harmony, but contrary to expectation, Moore's instrument is acoustic rather than electric. The vocal arrangements are equally brilliant, blending the kind of slick harmonizing and unison scat-singing that characterized The New Spirits of Rhythm and other swinging stringbands of the era. The Trio's exuberant can-do attitude is epitomized by its audaciously jazzy update of Strauss's
To these guys, nothing was considered impossible.
As 1939 progressed, the Trio's work for Standard Transcriptions introduced a couple of fascinating innovations. Its early work with another radio transcription company, Davis and Schwegler, had utilized Cole and his cohorts as accompanists for female vocalists, and by the time they had their next sessions with Standard, they were backing a smooth-as-silk vocal quartet called Pauline and Her Perils that would soon inspire acts like
The Pied Pipers.
The most sublime example here is
"Don't Let That Moon Get Away"
with Cole demonstrating his skill on another instrument with which some of his fellow jazz pianists had experimented, the celeste.
Another trend on which Standard Transcriptions and the Trio were quick to capitalize was the kind of smooth, sentimental pre-doowop harmony that launched the
Ink Spots
in that year of 1939;The Trio was backing an unknown vocal group called The Dreamers whom Oscar Moore couldn't identify when asked in 1946. The most beautiful examples preserved in this set are
and "A Fool's Affair"
In 1940, inspired by
Charlie Christian,
Oscar moore adopted the electric guitar, completing the sound that was to define the King Cole Trio from then onward. The set includes the Trio's first commercial recordings, released in 1940 by a small label called Ammor. By the end of the year Cole and his colleagues were touring nationally and had been picked up by Decca.
From the Decca material we hear
"Hittin' The Ramp",
the smartly swinging instrumental for which this historic package is named, and Cole's earliest rendition of
which would prove to be one of the Trio's first big hits a few years later for Capitol. We also hear Cole's 1941 slow-blues composition
which reached Number 1 on Billboard magazine's Harlem Hit Parade rhythm-and-blues chart on January 30th, 1943.
In 1942 jazz impresario Norman Granz brought Cole and now-legendary tenor saxophonist
Lester Young
together for his new and independent Philo label, and we hear them stretch out on "(back home again in)
Indiana",
"I Can't Get Started",
"Body and Soul",
and
"Tea For Jwo".
It was also during that year that Cole and his trio began appearing for the Armed Forces Radio Service to boost the morale of the troops fighting World War II. On a 1943 "AFRIENDS Jubilee" show they deliver an uptempo swinger called
(we're livin' in the U.S.A.)".
From 1942 or '43 comes one of this set's bluesiest tracks,
"I'm Gonna Move To The Outskirts of Town",
broadcast live on the Mutual network from the 331 Club in Los Angeles. "Music with swing and jive and the solid stuff, up and comin' with brother King Cole and the outfit!" the announcer proclaims.
"Although nothing on this package can be described as "common"," jazz historian Will Friedwald writes in the extensive booklet included here, "these are some of the rarest Cole items known to exist. Just in time for his centennial, we cover this quintessential American artist from his very first stirrings at the start of the swing era to the very precipice of universal fame during World War Two, with dozens of fascinating detours along the way."
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WHAT'S IN STORE: NEWS FROM THE MUSICAL Marketplace
Discover "The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll" At Phinney Books
"I didn't set out to revolutionize the world," Sam Phillips once told biographer Peter Guralnick. Nevertheless, that's just what he did as owner and operator of the Sun record label that launched Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Roy Orbison, and Jerry Lee Lewis. Your copy of Guralnick's book, SAM phillips: The Man Who Invented Rock 'n' Roll, is waiting for you at Phinney Books in Seattle's Greenwood neighborhood.
Phinney Books 7405 Greenwood Avenue North
Phone: 206/297-2665
Web: www.phinneybooks.com ----------------------------------------
Continue Your Ukulele Studies With Birch Pereira
Dusty Strings Acoustic Music Shop in the Fremont district, long known for its array of fine stringed instruments, instructional workshops, and folk concerts, is hosting a weekly intermediate ukulele course beginning Monday, August 2nd, at 7:30 PM. The instructor is Birch Pereira, leader of the local roots music sensation Birch Pereira and the Gin Joints. "Pick up where your Beginning Ukulele 1 class left off," he says, "and continue to explore new rhythms, strumming patterns, and fingerpicking while adding new songs to your repertoire."
Dusty Strings Acoustic Music Shop
3406 Fremont Avenue North
Phone: 206/634-1662.
Web: www.dustystrings.com
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ON THE NEWSSTAND: HERITAGE MUSIC REVIEW
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