kenny dorham, because life is unfair

Ask any modern decent trumpet player whose playing he likes, and Kenny Dorham's name pops into the list. Kenny Dorham epitomized the Blue Note hard bop approach as surely as Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, and Woody Shaw did. He played on as many classic albums, and he wrote "Blue Bossa", which is surely one of Blue Note's greatest sixties hits.

His 1963 Blue Note album Una Mas became damn near a label template. It marked the first on-record appearance for both drummer Tony Williams and tenor saxophonist Joe Henderson, as well as the first Blue Note date for Herbie Hancock, and they all played beautifully. The album opened with (shock!) "Una Mas", a proto-boogaloo that prefigured "The Sidewinder" and a huge chunk of what would open the lion's share (no pun intended) of Blue Note albums for the next few years, to say nothing of producer Alfred Lion taking note of Dorham's choices of sidemen. Also, Dorham's playing on other people's albums was stellar, and -- just as is the case with his bud Joe Henderson -- he fit well into a very wide range of dates. His playing with Art Blakey is fifties hard bop perfection. And his playing on Andrew Hill's belovedly avant garde Point Of Departure as thrilling as well, although his playing on Coltrane Time, which features him and John Coltrane in a quintet built around pianist Cecil Taylor doesn't work as comfortably.

But he never busted to the front of the line as did Lee Morgan or Woody Shaw. I never understood why he didn't.

This is the only footage I know of him. He's playing with Danish guys. Apparently, he was not considered important enough to film in the USA.

(The Danish are good about this, especially with trumpet players. In 1933, they took the first real live concert footage of Louis Armstrong.)

So those of you who like jazz but don't get really extensive, don't feel bad. Musicians know Kenny, but most people don't unless they're diehards. The profane term "musician's musician" has been affixed to him, and that never does anyone any kind of good. Neither was his 1972 death by kidney failure the stuff of legends. But his playing was really fantastic, and I hope this leads a few of you to check out Una Mas, at least.

Walter Hyatt, Late & Great

I was thinking of an old friend who isn't represented enough out in the world. Someone whose approach was a huge influence on me. Someone whose gentle advice and beautiful friendship I miss.

Walter Hyatt, 1949-96. Died on the ValuJet that crashed into the Everglades.

He had a group that was popular on the Austin circuit, Uncle Walt's Band. In 1987, Lyle Lovett produced his debut, King Tears. My roommate of quite a few years, Laurie Seniuk, played the hell out of this record for quite a few years. I totally shared her love for it, too. Walter Hyatt was like the Austin answer to Joao Gilberto. He sang soft with authentic gentle strength and power. He was his era's Floyd Tillman -- a jazzy, torchy, ballad-crooning brother of Western swing.

One night in 1993 -- when I was still living in Philly -- I saw he was playing at the Tin Angel, where I played quite often. I walked over. He hadn't gone on yet, so I walked to the little dressing room and introduced myself, and I told him how much I loved King Tears, and that knew and loved his music dearly. He was so enthusiastic and open that he invited me to play with him on the spot. I didn't have a guitar, so he told me to use his gorgeous round hole arch top Collings.

Although his record featured him with Lyle Lovett's rhythm section augmented by guitarist Champ Hood, he toured solo, and I watched how he presented his songs, how his voice was powerful but understated, and how great his guitar playing was. I wondered what the hell I was supposed to play when I got up there.

I shouldn't have worried. He introduced me, I walked up, and we locked into each other. I think he was shocked that I knew his songs as well as I did. But I really was quite the fan. And he was a truly fun singer to accompany. He had the same wonderful weaving/bending quality as Dee Lannon. Also, his qualities as a guitarist were only magnified by his dimension as a rhythm player.

We got to be friends and stayed in touch. He requested my group be his opening act when he'd play the Tin Angel, which was great of him. He also would periodically write me a letter. He had the most perfect handwriting this side of John Hartford's. He would ask advice about chords and so forth. He used my chords to "The Christmas Song" on his Christmas gigs. I was honored.

The last time I heard him, he played a new song called "All That Glistens". It was one of the most moving things I ever heard. As far as I know, he never recorded it.

Walter only made two albums. The second, Music Town, was produced by Jim Hoke, who played with and did some arrangements for NRBQ. Like King Tears, it featured Champ Hood's guitar beautifully throughout, and was a tiny gem. "Where The Blue Begins" is one of the great sad songs of the 1990's, up there with Dave Alvin's "Why Did She Stay With Him", Benmont Tench's "Unbreakable Heart", and Big Sandy's "If I Knew Now".

(I wish Walter had lived to hear Big Sandy's Feelin' Kinda Lucky album. I think he would have felt like Robert Williams was his lost extroverted brother.)

I hadn't been living in Los Angeles very long when my Philly roomie Laurie called up and asked if I'd heard about Walter. I thought she'd tell me he had a new record or something. I'd heard about the plane crash, but had no idea Walter was in it. The news was terrible and sudden. The worst I'd ever heard. Dave Alvin called me later that day to ask if I'd ever heard Walter Hyatt and that news like that scared the hell outta him. He was spooked.

I couldn't listen to Walter's records for quite some time in the wake of that.

One day about ten years ago, I was in a used CD store in Glendale, and I found both his discs in the 99 cent bin, and I bought them. I sat up all night listening to him again, rediscovering what a beautiful artist he was, what a wonderful legacy of classic songs he left behind, and feeling less of the loss of a guy I knew and more of the comfort that I ever got to know someone that good.

Years later, when I started making The Long Way Home, I thought of Walter, of staying acoustic in an electric world, and of not being afraid to sing quietly.

I still see Walter smiling with tight lips and slightly tired road eyes, reminding me that Nat Cole never had to raise his voice, no matter how big the band behind him.

Miss him.

recorded live

really rough mixes from the new live recording by skipheller

"Alan told us if we were in LA to see if Skip Heller was playing, but warned us it's not always easy to find when he is. He doesn't like to play anyplace that holds more than forty people, and his webpage doesn't usually have anything about his own music. He almost always writes about other people. But Alan told us to look on Facebook, and we found out he was playing at Rafa's Gallery and Lounge in the Echo Park district.

"We were loaded with a mix disc of Alan's favorite songs by Heller, and we were big fans by the time we found Rafa's, which was up a flight of steps under a bridge. The place was packed, and Rafa himself was selling food and beer our of the pantry. We got some hot dogs and fries and found a seat at the very edge of the bar. The opening act was Madame Somebody (Pamita - ed.). She played ukelele and sang thrities reefer songs. Actually, she was pretty damn good.

"She introduced Skip Heller as 'The man who is roots music in Los Angeles', and he came onstage to a big wave of applause. We felt the bar rattle, and the band started playing. It's just Skip on guitar and singing with a young kid playing stand-up bass and an older guy playing a snare drum with a pair of brushes. They were great. I didn't know Skip played lead, so it blew us away when he took these funky solos on acoustic. The bass player and drummer were great too. We were expecting this Bakersfield country like we'd heard on our mix, but he hardly played any of the songs we knew. He did maybe four in the whole set. It was mostly like country soul, but not like "Ode To Billy Joe". It was definitely more like Philly soul but it was definitely country. Most of the songs were either new, or songs he wrote for other people. He covered John Hartford, Jimmy Reed, and Waylon Jennings. When he talked between songs he was really funny. No star bullshit. He made you feel like the night was loose, but you could tell the band was really tight. You could see them concentrate. He'd glance at the bass player and smile, or he and the drummer would just nod to each other like they were playing on their porch.

"It was the best thing we saw the whole week in Cali."

play "misty" for me -- philly style

Some songs, it's hard to ever think of someone writing them. It's like they've always been among us, and likely none moreso than that most standard of jazz standards -- "Misty".

As it turns out, "Misty" is relatively young for a jazz standard. Errol Garner, that pure genius improviser, wrote in in 1954. It was released on the Dial label, on a 78, coupled with a tune called "Dreamy". Errol had already had a few moments in the sun, including a hit version of "Penthouse Serenade", which as not as miraculous as it might sound. There were a few jazz piano hit singles during that period (George Shearing having enjoyed some of the biggest).

Around 1959, Johnny Burke (who wrote lyrics for more Bing Crosby hits than anyone this side of Johnny Mercer) put words to the melody, and soon enough it became them makeout classic of a generation, and became de riguer for every pop singer who tackles the American songbook.

But its life as a ballad is far from its only life. In 1963, Lloyd Price released the uptempo version posted above (which includes the exclamation "Great googly moogly!", predating Frank Zappa's use of that same phrase in 1974's "Nanook Rubs It"). Lloyd lights it up in a big way, and it just about cracked the R&B Top Ten (peaking at 11). By far not Lloyds's biggest hit -- "Stagger Lee" was -- but, oddly enough, at least as influential.

Jazz organ fans are well aware that jazz organ was ghettoized by the very labels that put out the records, which meant lotsa organ combo covers of rock, pop, and rhythm'n'blues hits for jazz organ fans. "More", "California Sun", "Satisfaction", and many others were organ-ized.

In 1965, Camden, NJ son Richard "Groove" Holmes had been cutting for about four years, mostly for Pacific Jazz. But it was with his local Philly trio -- Gene Edwards (guitar) and Jimmie Smith (drums)-- that he cut the bare bones soul jazz masterpiece Soul Message for the notoriously parsimonious Prestige label, which included this masterpiece version of "Misty", which is still played in this arrangement someplace every night. This was a true jazz jukebox hit, and it's a performance as perfect as just about any in the jazz canons.

Prestige Records -- run by Bob Weinstock -- launched a great many important jazz careers, most notably Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, and Thelonious Monk. But the label's roster in the 1960's was really about organ-dominated soul jazz, exemplified by Groove Holmes, Charles Earland, Willis Jackson, Jack McDuff, and their ilk.

No doubt Errol Garner dreamt "Misty" to be the perfect ballad, which it was.

But -- as every Philadelphia who ever got served underage in a bar full of black folk two and three times his age can attest -- Errol Garner didn't have the last "Misty" word. Richard "Groove" Holmes did.

(PS Only other Camden-bred hit I know of is "Mixed Up Shook-Up Girl" by Patty and the Emblems.)

The French!!!

Not so long ago, lung cancer took Alain Bashung -- kind of the French Tom Waits -- from our earthly picture. He was truly a great artist, but he didn't seem to have found a footing on American soil, where we only seem to embrace popular music from another culture if it comes from either Latin or African sources, "99 Luftbaloons" notwithstanding.

I have dear friends in France, who have turned me onto some really excellent music of their country. First, they told me about Charles Trenet, sort of the Bing Crosby of France, whose "La Mer" and "Boum" are among the most enduring pop songs of the first half of the 20th century. He lived to be 88, performing up almost to the day he died (in 2001).

The 1940's were formative years for Henri Salvador (1917-2008), whose music floored me when I first heard it. I heard him and immediately felt like he was familar somehow. Salvador was actually born in French Guyana, but apprently his family migrated to France when he was quite young. He started out as a self-taught guitarist, and got good enough to have backed his hero Django Reinhardt at some point in the forties. But Salvador also made his way as a vocalist, and by the early fifties had recorded a few sides (arranged by a young Quincy Jones). In 1956, he cut the first known French rock'n'roll songs, and they're awful. But his 1957 "Dans Mon Ile" was a kind of proto-bossa nova that inspired a formative Jobim. In 2005, the country of Brazil -- their cultural minster being the singer/songwriter Gilberto Gil -- awarded Salvador the Brazilian Order of Cultural Merit for his influence on Brazilian culture, so I'm pretty sure I'm not stretching things.

Salvador's jazz stuff from the fifties is impressive. He's very gentle, but there's a quiet, poigniant strength to him that could claim kinship with the Sinatra of In The Wee Small Hours. At the same time, he has a smoldering swinging sensibility that feels like a cross betweem Trenet and Jack Teagarden. He defies gravity. When I first heard him, I immedaitely thought of Caetano Veloso. As it turns out, Caetano claims him as an influence, and even namechecks him in the song "Reconvexo", where he asks "quem não sentiu o swing de Henri Salvador?" ("who hasn't felt the swing of Henri Salvador?").

From the sixties onward, Salvador was known to French audiences more as a TV personality and musical comedian (he made hit comedy records) -- he was a terrific comic -- than as a jazz singer, which is a damn shame. His version of "Petite Fluer" was as classic a record as a great many of Crosby's best, but Crosby was more skillful about keeping his profile as a jazz singer from being obscured by his movie stardom.

His 2002 album, Chamber Avec Vue (Room With A View) did much to point to his rightful place as a kind of godfather to bossa nova. It was the first Salvador record I heard (thank you Didier), and it whetted my appetite. But -- in those pre-You Tube days -- finding anything other than a few Scopitones wasn't easy, so what little I could get my hands on of him made for an uneven collection at best. The most satisfying thing I got was a 10" LP on Barclay, which I found at Dr Music in Fairhope, AL (thank you Wade), which included "Dans Mon Ile". I knew greatness when I heard it, so I kept scratching away.

Then last week, Didier sent me Salvador Jazze, a disc that compiles the best of his jazz stuff, and Kari (my girlfriend) and I spent a piece of New Year's Day driving around Tolouca Lake and NoHo, listening to it in awe. It was, for me, like finding a picture of a relative who you never knew you had, but whom you closely resemble.

It all reminds me of a conversation I had not so long ago with Teller (of Penn &), where he said that he prefers music that doesn't announce its own importance via, um, firepower. Rather, he prefers something you have to listen to closely, because then you become more personally involved in what you're hearing, and that's when the engagement becomes emotionally overwhelming, because you're up close and personal to the music you're hearing. We were discussing Bach's keyboard music when he made this assessment, but I think it works for any music whose strength comes of its intimacy, style be damned. And Teller's words came back to me as Kari and I went north on Cahuenga with Salvador as our soundtrack.

It's easy for singers who belt it out to get over. Volume rules. But the greatness of Salvador -- and Veloso, Gilberto, and Haggard, for that matter -- is the ability to make you lean in and then hold you with whispers.