Joys and Concerns #5

With Mark Helias; Donald Bailey preview; essay links; the Ellington band shows us how.

The monthly series at Ibeam in Brooklyn continues this Monday March 17th, 8 PM. With my close comrades Chet Doxas and Jacob Sacks, we’ll reunite with bassist Mark Helias. Something is taking root here— this is our third gig, and we’re compiling our performances for a possible release.

I’m so thrilled to be able to do these shows— if you’re in town, please come by and say hello. Glad to see Ibeam thriving, look at all these concerts.

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Drummer Donald Bailey is on my mind these days. That’s Donald’s unforgettable shuffle, with the hi-hat on the “ands” of every beat, on Jimmy Smith’s “Back At The Chicken Shack”. I’ve heard Billy Hart play a shuffle with the hi-hat on the ands more than a few times. According to Billy, he got it from Donald.

That “Chicken Shack” beat is totally unique and well-known amongst drummers. It’s a nice summary of Bailey’s uniqueness— he re-engineered a common shuffle, making it his own and making it an integral part of the song. You simply can’t play “Back at the Chicken Shack” without playing Bailey’s beat, it’s just part of the song.

What’s more, Donald Bailey left a strong impression on quite a few: Billy Hart, Billy Goodwin, Joey Baron, Larry Grenadier, and Kenny Wollesen have all told me of Bailey’s importance— I remember a conversation with Kenny at Zebulon years and years ago about music and life that centered on Donald Bailey.

It’s overdue, but I’m finally working on a full essay about Donald, a proper career overview with links to recordings. In the meantime, check out Donald on Jimmy Smith’s “The Boss”, a D minor blues recorded live in Atlanta in 1968 and released on Verve.

Bailey’s cymbal beat shines under George Benson’s solo, but once Jimmy Smith gets going, unfurling dazzling sixteenth-note lines that dart, skip, ricochet, and recombine, Donald creates a thick forest floor of snare drum, bass drum, and hi-hat, each limb more-or-less completely independent.

From about 6:31 to 7:45— 5 choruses of Smith’s solo— Bailey and Smith work up a dense, impossible-to-notate swirl that leaves me shaking my head no matter how many times I hear it. I can barely count through those choruses, but Bailey knows exactly what’s going on. He’s right on the money. More soon.

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So much good writing and thinking on this platform. We need it all.

• “ My house is florid, ornamented, with a decorative cornice connecting the roof to the facade, and fanciful flowered stained glass transoms, windows surrounded by classical molding and stylized lintels, the large stones over the windows and front door. It’s loosely built in a style called “Renaissance Revival”, referencing the Italian Renaissance and buildings from 5 centuries ago. Aimed at providing a flavor of upper class Europe for working class mostly immigrant buyers striving to make it in the New World, it is a house of the past.”

  Welcome Jacob Garchik to Substack! The trombonist-composer has been exploring details in sound and style, taking in trends in architecture, composition, and improvisation, showing us how it’s all connected.

• “These are unreleased and un-remastered takes of Nina and piano, and they are so gorgeous in their doomed faith in the faithless, I felt like I was performing an illegal heist on the first listen, like I’d found a portal where Nina Simone’s several lives we lived in unison, a collapsed quantum field rejoicing in accomplishment.”

  Only Harmony Holiday would dare to write a sentence this bold, this ambitious. Once again, she’s let me hear music in a new way.

• “What reading does do is make demands of the individual. It is active, not passive, and the act of reading wills an imagination into being. The imagination is the greatest muscle of all, one that must never be allowed to atrophy away.”

  Ross Barkan comes through with some strong words in favor of reading and all related activities.

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A section of Stanley Dance’s The World Of Duke Ellington (1970) is a daily chronicle of the Ellington band on a State Department tour of South America in September 1968. Ellington is 69 years old, and has been leading the orchestra for more than 40 years; Harry Carney and Johnny Hodges, both on the tour, have been with him since 1927 and 1928, respectively.

The itinerary is full— a new city every day, arrived at by plane and/or bus, and for Ellington, diplomatic events and receptions after the shows. I get tired just reading about the long concerts, autograph seekers and jazz fanatics chasing the band, post-concert jam sessions, and 6:30 AM hotel departures, but Dance captures the vitality of Duke and the band. They might be tired, but they’re at home and in their element— playing with Duke, making friends, sitting in, staying out, these are irrepressible jazz warriors doing what they love. Dance’s clear and artful prose conveys Ellington and the band’s mission and joy so well that I want to run out and join them.

A quick YouTube search didn’t show any videos from this tour, but a 1969 concert in Norway comes right up. Right from the beginning, sure, you can see weariness and fatigue, and some of the ensembles are pretty ragged, but keep going, and we see and hear pride, dignity, humor, and joy¹. No matter what, one thing comes shooting off the screen: these people believe in the value of what they are doing.

1. Six woodwinds! Is Norris Turney the saxophonist sitting to Harry Carney’s right?