I was listening in the car to some early Stan Getz. A version of "Don't worry 'bout me" had some explicit Lester Youngisms ("What Lester plays, Stan getz"). Still, it was beautiful stuff: a happy medium swing tempo for a song that is usually played as a sad ballad. Lester would have played it sadder. Getz somewhat later made that legato even more legato, to the point of having the softest attack of almost any sax player. It's almost a bassoon. On a cd I bought once, they put an early Dexter Gordon session on a Lester Young cd., supposedly on the theory that Dexter at this point was basically playing Lester Young's style. And of course, there is Paul Quinichette, known as "Vice-pres" because he basically played an imitation of Lester Young's style. And that's just the tenors: alto players also felt his influence, especially white players of the cool West Coast school like Art Pepper.

People know that Billie Holiday gave him that nickname (Pres) because that seemd more appropriate than titles of nobility favored by others at the time (Duke, Count), and that he nicknamed her Lady Day. What I didn't realize until a while back was that Lester called everyone "Lady." Oscar Peterson was "Lady P." Quinichette would be "Layd Q." All of a sudden that name for Holiday looks a little different!

There's stuff on this Coltrane broadcast I've never heard: this version of "Body and Soul" I'm listening to right now. A wonderful flute solo by Eric Dolphy on "My Favorite Things." I would never presume to an expertise I don't have. There are always things I'm discovering.

Poor Phil Schaap. So knowledgeable and apparently well spoken. Yet he manages to talk without moving from the realm of the obvious and the anecdotal for half hour stretches. What makes Bird great? He doesn't say. He proposed that in the last few years of his life Charlie Parker was moving in a different direction. Ok. But how about telling us what that direction is? I had to go home from my office before I found out. We had to be told first that in Western music there is harmony, melody, and rhythm.

For me it's, a kind of uncanny quality that is also present in Lester Young. It's not speed per se, but a rhythmic quality of elasticity, an ability to dilate or compress time itself at will. The ability to play very fast is necessary, but not sufficient to achieve this quality, obviously. (In fact it is present at slower tempos with as much, or more, intensity.) Time can stand almost still at a breakneck tempo, yet speed up at a very slow tempo. The subtlety and taste of his phrasing is unmatched.

This is what fascinated Julio Cortázar who wrote a long short story called "El perseguidor" about Parker. (The "Johnny" in JC's story is very obviously Bird.)

There are many musicians I admire who don't at all have this "uncanny" quality. It is in Bud Powell, but not in Art Blakey. Tatum had it.

I'm listening to the WKCR Lester Young birthday broadcast. Although I've heard most of the tracks before I'm sure there will be surprises.

It's interesting to here three distinctive flavors in the piano backups. Teddy Wilson, Nat King Cole, and Oscar Peterson. Cole is one of my favorite piano players of mid-century, and seems to complement Lester perfectly. With Buddy Rich on the drums to boot. Teddy plays with the perfect flavor of the 30s. OP comes out of Cole's style, to some extent.

The interesting thing is to hear a phrase you've heard before--but on a track that you've never heard. There's that eerie familiarity / strangeness.

Timbre might be be a good entry into the category of the immanent. That's another way of saying the qualitative, the irreducible, the distinctive.

Paul Desmond: A very saturated, dense tone. Imagine a wall painted with many coats of a bright color mixed with a little black.

Stan Getz: Airy and light, with a lot of breath. Here there is white mixed in the paint instead of black. The attack of each note is more discernible. A hint of bassoon.

Charley Rouse: Almost textureless. I have no visual image of his timbre at all!

Lee Konitz: Bright and ringy. Smooth on the surface but with a lot of upperlevel partials giving it a tense harshness. You never forget that the saxophone is made of metal.

etc...

Random music from my laptop. A supposedly random selection of 1300 songs.

1) Ben Webster. "Early Session Hop." As typical for this epoch, the soloists sound hipper than the background, arrangements, rhythm sections. Webster didn't get much of a chance to make a statement.

2) Ella Fitzgerald. "My Heart Stood Still." (Rogers and Hart Songbook). A perfect rendition of that lyric, that perfect line "My heart stood still."

3) BW. "Linger A While." This sounds like the same corny rhythm section. Fire the drummer! I cannot rate Webster with Coleman Hawkins. There's not that fire in the belly. The two solos after him sound rinky-dink. They're nice enough in a period-style sort of way, I guess, with those mutes in the bells of trumpets and trombones.

3) Antonio Gamoneda. The first part of Libro del frío, "Geórgicas." Not "music," I guess. I memorized this book of poetry almost entire a few years back. "Esta casa estuvo dedicada a la labranza y la muerte." What will my computer give me next?

4) Miles Davis. "So What." A live version, from the Blackhawk in San Francisco, a little faster than the Kind of Blue version. He goes on long in this solo, leaving a lot of space. Then the sax come in, not particularly intensely. Hank Mobley is good, but not quite good enough for this group. Mobley is to Coltrane as Webster is to Hawkins.

5) Cal Tjader. "Cal's Bluedo." Too "space-age bachelor pad" for me, tonight. That was a surprise. It doesn't quite get the Latin feel it's striving for. Lose the shaker.

6) Cannoball Adderley. "Them Dirty Blues." I believe this has Nat on cornet. Now I have to decide whether I really like Cannonball Adderley. This two-feel on Nat's solo is not really doing it for me. It's not really swinging. Maybe it just doesn't match my mood today.

7) Art Tatum. "I've got a right to sing the blues." He's showing them how to do it. First a rubato chorus to set up the tension, then a chorus in time, with lots of ornaments. I used to think this was all improvised when I was a kid, but it has the feel for me now of a worked-up arrangement. Nothing wrong with that. I like the architecture of it, in so short a space.

8) Bach. Allemande from Suite # 5. I heard Pau Casals on Youtube the other day, so now Yo Yo Ma has been demoted.

9) Monte adentro, "Igualito a ti," off one of those putumayo world music collections. That doesn't hit the spot either. Something perfunctory about it. This music has to groove or it has nothing.

10) Lee Konitz. "317 East 32nd St." I love Lee Konitz, but lose the clunky bass player, the chunky drums. And Konitz's ringy timbre wears out its welcome. What's the meaning of that address?

And the winner is ... Art Tatum!

Lee Konitz.

Timbre. Bright, saturated color, intensity, an "acerbic" quality. A marked preference for the middle-to-high register. Vibrato only on longer notes.

Improvisational style. Like Benny Carter, mostly melodic paraphrase in long, sinuous phrases. A trademark move is for him to go up when you expect him to go down. Climax of the solo may be understated at times. Ideas are extremely inventive, but logical. Almost no ornament. A few quotations but not intrusive ones.

It's about as far from the Charlie Parker style as possible, considering that the rhythmic and harmonic conception is pure bop. In other words, it suggests neither a period anterior to Bird, or a development beyond him, yet it doesn't really resemble him at all. This is pretty miraculous. It's in the same general neighborhood as Stan Getz, Paul Desmond, and Art Pepper and other White Saxes of the 50s. The phrases lay back a bit, but never lose intensity. There's an analytical approach in his playing that foreshadows Anthony Braxton.

Personality profile. Introverted, unfrivolous, a bit wry. Very individual. There is wit there but it doesn't need explain itself. Total spontaneity and freedom but no sense of hesitancy. Airiness, lightness, rather than Rollinesque exuberant joy. A high degree of "purity."

Sam Rivers! It's like discovering another Eric Dolphy, Harold Land, Wayne Shorter, or Warne Marsh that you never knew about. How do fit him in the picture? What else has to move over a step, if anything, for things to make sense again? There's a lot of Dolphy in his playing, from what I can hear, so the first thought would be to see him as a Dolphy-influenced player. But he's more than that. (Tune in to WKCR for a week-long festival on this tenor man.)

***

Last night in Lawrence, Kansas for many months. Will everything fit in my car? My office is packed up too; they will move it to another floor in June.

I was listening to the Verve Benny Carter small group sessions on my latest long car trip (highly recommended btw). These are the notes I took in my head as I was driving.

Timbre: Warm, but not too sweet. A rough edge. Breathy in the lower register, bright at the higher range. Timbre, intonation, articulation, are not constant but expressive, variable.

Vibrato is noticeable on longer notes, and is highly controlled. One of his trademarks is to crescendo through a long notes while increasing the vibrato. His normal style at fast tempo has virtually no vibrato at all.

Phrasing and rhythm: Phrases tend to be long, with logical connections between phrases. At slower tempi there is a rubato feel, even when he is playing over strict time. There is no nervous edginess; the rhythmic conception is pre-bop. At medium tempo plays on the beat, rather than lagging behind or pushing it. At slower tempi he plays more behind, but not as much as the later Lester Young. Articulation is fluid, legato, with sensitive dynamics, especially at slower tempo. Attack is sharper at fast tempo. (Always sharper than Johnny Hodges.)

Improvisational style: There is a lot of direct statement of the melody, with variation in rhythmic phrasing but not a lot of excess ornament. There is more melodic paraphrase than simple "blowing over the chord changes." (You can always tell what song he is playing!) Ideas are inventive, memorable, melodic, exploitating the full range of the alto sax. A strong sense of logic in the development of solos. Limited use of too obvious formulas. However, if he comes upon a phrase he likes he will repeat it a few times before moving on. Very "tasty" aesthetic, similar to Teddy Wilson (who plays on some of these tracks.) In the same general feel as Lester Young.

Emotional range: he excells both at melancholy and exuberance. (He has different approaches to slow and fast tempi.) He is not afraid to be lushly romantic, but doesn't lapse into bad taste, because there is a wry tone of resignation in his melancholy.

Overall qualities: Intelligence, warmth, flexibility, amiability, confident ease, equanimity. Emotional responsiveness. Good taste ("tastiness"). A pleasant up and down "lilt" to his playing, resulting from overall rhythmic and melodic approach. Along with Hodges, Young, Hawkins, the best representatives of the classic "swing" style on the saxophone.