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From the book “The Blues Alive”:

I’m going down yonder

behind the sun

Gonna do some things there

Ain’t never been done

Hold back the lightnin’

With the palm of my hand

Shake hands with the devil

Make him crawl in the sand.

This lyric from Koko Taylor, high priestess of Chicago blues, still belies the attitude that the devil is a bad guy, but it also describes a journey into the netherworlds that would seem sinful by Christian standards. “Shaking hands with the devil” is what the blues is about: making friends iwth our nastiness, gaining the power necessary to deal with our darkest emotions. this kind of activity was not fully accepted at the local church.

Here is an excerpt from “The Blues Alive” by Ed Flaherty:

Sex and the blues have always been intimate partners. Before the sexual revolution of the 1960s (which was largely fueled by the in-your-face eroticism of rock and roll) blues and jazz singers had been spelling out the facts of life for over fifty years. In the 1920s and ’30s, Bessie Smith was singing about lesbianism and wanting her man to go “deep sea diving”. The blue uses every possible metaphor for sex one could imagine: squeezing lemons, fishing ponds, roosters crowing, cows being milked, and of course, jelly rolls, a fascinating metaphor because it is the only word I know of that can refer to both the male and female genitalia. Now that’s economy of language!

This is the third part of a series of posts focusing on jazz guitarists from the book “The Guitar in Jazz“.

The following excerpt documents a quick summary of Jim Hall’s path to jazz success:

Hall’s first step was to move to Los Angeles, where he joined Chico Hamilton for a year, the Jimmy Giuffre for the next three. Critics compared the Giuffre trio (reeds, guitar, bass) to classical chamber-music groups. Hall also taught with Giuffre at the Lenox School of Jazz, but felt finally the lure of New York, to which he moved in 1960. He worked there first with alto saxist Lee Konitz, then tenor great Sonny Rollins, eventually with trumpeter Art Farmer, all the time doing record dates with Konitz, Rollins, Paul Desmond, Quincy Jones, and Bill Evans. (Evans and he cut a fine duet album for United Artists, Undercurrent.)

This is the second part of a series of posts featuring jazz guitarists from the book “The Guitar in Jazz, an Anthology“.

If Charlie (Christian) had been influenced by anyone directly, he never let on. Little is known of his formative years. It hardly makes sense, still. To anyone who knew him from 1937 on, it appeared that Charlie was the mature, original genius and had never been anything but. It was thus with Louis and Bird and maybe Tatum. Teddy Hill, who was Charlie’s best friend after he hit New York, still scratches his head when he tries to explain the phenomenon.

“Where did he come from?” he’ll ask, of no one in particular. “When we were kids growing up here in New York, we watched Benny Carter grow from a squeaky beginner to a master musician. Or take Dizzy. When he joined my band after Roy Eldridge left, he played just about like Roy. Then he was influenced a lot by Bill Dillard, who played lead trumpet for me and who, incidentally, was one of the best I ever had. Then Dizzy began to work out those new things with Monk and Klook (Kenny Clarke)…The point is, we could see him grow. But what about Charlie…Where did he come from?”

This is the first part of a series of posts spotlighting jazz guitarists from the book titled “The Guitar in Jazz, an Anthology“.

Django Reinhardt - But what he did with those blues! Augmented and diminished chord sequences coming out of nowhere, abrupt key changes, a little Gypsy minor-chord funk - imagination: the flow never stopped. Nothing was sacred, either. Musical rules meant little to him. He did anything he could to get the sound he heard in his head onto the guitar. With his sense of melodic invention and ear for musical drama, Django could transform the most familiar song into a musical adventure.

From the book Jazz Matters:

Freddie Hubbard, too, occasionally dance on the stand, always briefly and somewhat bearishly. For the most part, in the craft of occupying space while not playing, his forte is striking poses. Being a handsome and self-assured man who dresses well, he does so quite effectively. His poses are created during short promenades across the stand, often preceded or followed by quick jumps into the air at crucial moments in the music. The leaps are employed to give cues to they rhythm section, triggering changes in intensity or directions.

Watching this band is not boring.

The book From Birdland to Broadway is so full of jazz musician life in New York City anecdotes that you can find something amusing on just about any page you open to. Here is one:

During a backstage conversation. Willie “the Lion” Smith spoke up sharply when someone began complaining about the lack of respect that musicians encountered in the music business.

“Musicians get exactly the amount of respect that they deserve!” he said. “They don’t get it because they don’t demand it. You got to educate people to give you the treatment you want. I’ll give you an example. I was called last month by this club owner up in Connecticut who wanted me to play in his establishment. After we agreed on a price, he started telling me what bus to take to get up there! I said, hold it! What I want to know is what time does the limousine pick me up at my house? Otherwise, the deal is off! I had to educate him, you see.”

Here is an excerpt from Birdland to Broadway about Erroll Garner showing up to hear Lionel Hampton’s band at an engagement in a hotel restaurant, wherein management supplied the bandstand with an out-of-tune spinet piano with some broken keys. Hampton’s pianist had setup his Wurlitzer he used for practice, but Erroll Garner did not know why. Here is how it went down:

Erroll lived  just up the street at the Carnegie Hall apartments. He and some friends came in and took a table in front of the bandstand. Hampton motioned for him to come up and play, and Hamp’s pianist got up from the Wurlitzer to make room for him. Erroll sat down at the spinet instead, indicating his preference for a “real” piano. As he played one measure on the crippled spinet, his eyebrows shot up and his mouth made an O of surprise. He leaped up without missing a beat and continued his solo on the Wurlitzer. even with its limitation, he made it sound wonderful.

The book From Birdland To Broadway is a collection of personal accounts from journeyman bass player Bill Crow in 1950s New York. He shares his experiences with a raw and uncanny truthfulness, as this one with the great saxophone player Stan Getz:

I had a terrifying experience with Stan one night after a concert in The Bronx. He had driven me to the job with my bass, and on the way home he asked if I’d mind waiting while he stopped to visit some friends…

Eventually I began to wonder where Stan was, and when he was going to drive me home. I found him in the basement rec room with four or five other guys. He was leaning on the pool table, tying up his arm and getting ready to shoot up some heroin. I said, “Come on, Stan, don’t do that. It’s time to go home.”

He injected the drug, loosened the tie on his arm, turned pale, and collabsed on the floor. Blackie quickly rolled him over on this back.

“He isn’t breathing!”

“Oh, my God!” yelled the host. “Get him out of here! I don’t want no stiff in my house!”

“Push on his ribs!” I shouted. “Artificial respiration! He’s turning blue!”

Blackie pumped his chest while I pried his mouth open and pulled his tongue forward. After a few tense moments, Stan made a strangling noise and sucked in some air. His color returned, and he began breathing on his own again.

When he opened his eyes, he scowled at Blackie and said, “Man, get off me! You’re getting my suit all dirty!”

“Motherfucker! You were dead!” yelled Blackie, jumping to his feet…

Stan got up and brushed himself off. He gave everyone a surly look and said, “Well, I bet I’m higher than any of you.”

From the book Jazz Matters:

As in all matters, (Cannonball) Adderly was engagingly honest about (Ornette) Coleman the band leader.

“I enjoy listening to him play. I don’t like his band so much. I think his judgment regarding musicians rivals that of another dear friend of min, Dizzy Gillespie. I’ve always wondered how guys can be so great and have other great guys with them and have some sots that are so glaringly weak. You just have to say, ‘Well, are they serious?’ Dizzy is that type and Ornette has some the same problems. I think he initially came to New York with a great band, Billy Higgins, Charlie Haden, and Don Cherry. They had a sound identity. Everybody played well. He has since had some questionable musicians performing with him. and sometimes Ornette himself makes me nervous. He’ll pick up the trumpet or the violin and it’s very hard for me to believe that he’s serious. But he is.”